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THE WHY OF 
POVERTY 



THE 

Hbbey press 

PUBLISHERS 

114 

FIFTH AVENUE 

Xonfcon new york fliontreal 







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THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two Copies Received 

MAY. 21 1901 


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Copyright entry 

CLASylVxXc. N». 

COPY B. 






Copyright, 190 1, 




by 




THE 




Bbbett press 


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TO MY WIFE 

THIS, 

MY FIRST IN COVERS, 

IS 

AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED. 



CONTENTS. 






CHAPTER I. 
Introduction 7 

CHAPTER II. 
The Tribute to King Alcohol 24 

CHAPTER III. 
The Continual Burnt Offering 40 

CHAPTER IV. 
Expensive Amusements « 54 

CHAPTER V. 
The American Weakness 63 

CHAPTER VI. 
The Penalty of Ignorance 75 

CHAPTER VII. 
Babelism e 86 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Aversion to Manual Labor 96 

CHAPTER IX. 
The Tax on Barbarism 105 



6 Contents. 

chapter x. 

The Economics of the Strike 120 

CHAPTER XL 
The Economics of Speculation 135 

CHAPTER XII. 
The Ethics of Labor 151 

CHAPTER XIII. 
The Ethics of Speculation 167 



THE WHY OF POVERTY. 



CHAPTER L 

INTRODUCTION. 

The most troublesome element of the social 
problem on its economic side is the element of 
poverty. All other questions at the present 
time seem to radiate from this as their common 
center. Every scheme for reform seems to 
have this for its ultimate end, — to relieve pov- 
erty. Poverty makes men restless, it makes 
them envious, it makes them desperate. And % 
there is poverty in our land, hard, grinding 
poverty, notwithstanding the fact that the na- 
tion as a whole is growing richer at the rate 
of more than a billion dollars annually. 
Periodically there sweeps over the country a 
wave of hard times and thousands of struggling 
workers are almost swallowed up in its resist- 
less flood. Even during what we call easy 
times there are many who must battle night 
and day to keep the wolf from the door. Mul- 
titudes of families know nothing of luxury, 

7 



8 The Why of Poverty. 

and not a few are strangers to even the com- 
forts and decencies of life. Children are reared 
amid squalor and filth unfit for animals. 
Women wear out their lives toiling for a mere 
pittance. Hungry ones long in vain for nour- 
ishing food ; and weary ones are spurred on to 
their toil by the knowledge that rest means 
starvation. 

These weary ones look across the way and 
see their neighbors living in plenty, who ap- 
parently toil no harder than they. The sight 
fills them with discontent; for they feel sure 
that something is wrong with the world in 
which they live. Wealth is certainly very un- 
equally distributed. The fact is patent to all, 
and the question naturally arises, — What is 
the cause of this inequality? Who is respon- 
sible for the fact that one man has enough and 
to spare while his brother man perishes with 
hunger? Is it the fault of existing social sys- 
tems, or of the wickedness of individual men 
and women, or of an unequal Providence? 

This is a vital question. It strikes at the 
tap-root of the social problem in its broadest 
outlook. In the cause of an evil lies the secret 
of its cure. Therefore the first step towards 
the cure of poverty must be the discovery of 
the causes of poverty. 

Most men are ready to lay the blame for 
every evil and for every misfortune which they 
suffer upon others, whether they have sufficient 



Introduction. 9 

reason to do so or not. The poor are apt to say 
that their condition is the result of adverse cir- 
cumstances. They accuse their wealthier neigh- 
bors of dishonesty and extortion. They mur- 
mur against the peculiar difficulties and adver- 
sities which Providence has placed in their 
pathway. The writings and speeches of radi- 
cal socialists abound in denunciations of all 
who have succeeded in accumulating large 
fortunes. Without discrimination they are 
branded as robbers of the poor, oppressors of 
the weak, enemies of honest toil ; and the poor 
are led to believe that the property of every 
rich man represents a certain amount of wealth 
stolen directly from them. On the other hand, 
how often we hear the wealthy and comfort- 
able ones speaking contemptuously of the poor 
as the miserable and pitiable victims of their 
own ignorance or lack of thrift. They say 
that all who suffer are themselves to blame. 
They are idle, careless, improvident, immoral, 
and much more of the same sort. 

Such sweeping denunciations on either side 
are unjust, and most frequently they are the 
utterance of those who know but little as to 
the actual truth involved. Worse than all, 
they do not help in the smallest degree to re- 
lieve existing difficulties or to prepare the way 
for better things in future. Quite the con- 
trary. They intensify all feelings of hostility 
and drive men farther apart than ever, thus 



io The Why of Poverty. 

causing an unreasonable and useless delay in 
the solution of the social problem. 

In all such assertions there is a shadow of 
truth, a small basis of reason; and it is this 
element of truth that gives them power for 
evil. There are undoubtedly many dishonest 
men among the wealthy. But there are also 
many dishonest poor men. If some of the 
poor are thriftless and idle, the rich are not 
without their idlers and their unthrifty ones. 
Wealth is not proof positive of dishonesty any 
more than poverty is incontrovertible evidence 
of a lack of thrift and industry. Furthermore, 
if a man is poor because he has been wronged, 
it does not follow by any manner of necessity 
that he has been wronged by a rich man. 
Whenever, therefore, a tale of wrong and suf- 
fering comes to us, we cannot jump at once to 
& conclusion regarding the cause. We must 
investigate the matter carefully in all its bear- 
ings, before we can pronounce judgments that 
shall have any weight or offer advice that shall 
be of real service. We must first inquire who 
has been wronged. We must find out to 
what extent he has been wronged. Then 
we must ask who has wronged him. Is 
he really wronged at all? Or is he simply 
unfortunate? Has he been wronged by 
others or by himself? Is his unhappy con- 
dition the result of his own ignorance, 
selfishness, obstinacy ? Or has he been the 



Introduction. n 

helpless victim of a partial Providence or an 
unequal system of distribution? That a per- 
son is wronged implies injustice on the part 
of some one. That which is wrong when suf- 
fered cannot be right when committed. It 
may be himself, or it may be another, that 
has done the wrong. Wherever the wrong 
lies, we must trace it and remove it. Other- 
wise we may not hope to remove its results. 

As we study the conditions of American 
society one fact impresses itself upon us al- 
most immediately, namely, that the poor of 
cur land do not belong to any particular class, 
nor can they be said to form a distinct class of 
themselves. This fact should be emphasized, 
for it is significant. Many associate poverty 
with toil, and talk about " poor working peo- 
ple." Others speak of the " poor classes," and 
the " wealthy classes," as though there are 
some distinct line drawn between them. Now, 
however this may be in other lands, it is not 
so in our own America. Our poor are not a 
separate class, nor are they all working people. 
Many of the hardest workers in the land are 
among the so-called wealthy classes. The 
thousands of poor people in our great cities 
and elsewhere are in the main so many dis- 
tinct and wholly unrelated units. They are 
not connected by ties of class or heredity. The 
poor man of to-day is the son of yesterday's 
millionaire, and his son will probably be the 



12 The Why of Poverty. 

capitalist of to-morrow. The rotation " from 
shirt-sleeves to shirt-sleeves in three genera- 
tions " is no myth, but a common occurrence 
in American society. Furthermore, the man 
who now complains of poverty but a few years 
ago stood side by side with his rich neighbor 
in school, in the work-shop, or in the counting- 
house. Then there was no appreciable differ- 
ence in their wealth. They began life at prac- 
tically the same point; but their paths diverged. 
No candid student, therefore, can justly con- 
nect poverty and labor as though there were 
some natural relation between the two. 

To connect poverty with progress, as though 
the latter were cause and the former effect, is 
equally unjust. The assumption that poverty 
increases as a consequence of the material 
progress of society is utterly false, not to say 
foolish. The countries of the Old World have 
made great material progress during the past 
few centuries, and poverty has not increased. 
On the contrary, the most carefully collected 
statistics and the most thoroughly sifted facts 
prove that poverty and pauperism have de- 
creased in modern times. In England the 
number of paupers to-day is less than one-half 
as great in proportion to the entire population 
of the country as it was in the seventeenth cen- 
tury. Even the casual reader of history can- 
not be ignorant of the fact that in England and 
France the condition of the poorer people has 



Introduction. 13 

been constantly improving for two hundred 
years. In our own land the condition of things 
is vastly better than in any country of Europe. 
We must take into account the enormous in- 
crease in our population during the present 
century, and it would be difficult to prove that 
the proportion of poverty is any greater than 
in the early days of our national existence. 
One thing is certain; the average earnings of 
laboring men are rapidly increasing, and every 
year the manual laborers are securing a larger 
share of the profits of production. The truth 
of this statement may be easily verified by any 
intelligent person who will take the trouble to 
consult the facts within the range of his own 
observation. 

The writer of Progress and Poverty brings 
before us, as an illustration of his pet theory, 
the growth of a new state like California, and 
says that in the early days of its history, be- 
fore the resources of the State began to be de- 
veloped, there was no appreciable poverty 
\v 7 ithin her borders; but with the building of 
railroads and the development of the wonder- 
tul resources of the State poverty appears. 
Therefore, — the material progress of the State 
is the cause of the poverty of some of its in- 
habitants! 

Such a conclusion, though widely accepted, 
is a palpable non sequitur. To use a technical 
phrase of the schools, it is " mistaking ante- 



14 The Why of Poverty. 

cedent coincidence for cause." As well might 
we say that because Mr. Jones died on the 
very day when Mr. Smith was married, there- 
fore, Mr. Smith's marriage was the cause of 
Mr. Jones' death, or vice versa. Before the 
resources of California were developed and 
railroads built, only men of energy or of some 
wealth could obtain a settlement in the state 
but with social development and improved 
facilities for travel multitudes have flocked in, 
poor men as well as rich, the idle as well as the 
industrious, tramps and speculators as well as 
artisans and legitimate traders, and they have 
brought with them all the causes of poverty. 
The gravest charge that we can justly make 
against the material progress of the state is 
that it has not sufficed in every case to neutral- 
ize the real causes of poverty. 

The same may be said of the country at 
large. Poverty exists in spite of increasing 
wealth. But no reasonable man can ask the 
question, — Why does increasing prosperity 
tend to make certain classes of the people 
poorer? Such a question is stultified by facts. 
Increasing prosperity does not tend to do any 
such thing. The question which we must ask, 
and which it is above all things important that 
we should answer, is — Why does not our mar- 
velous national prosperity preclude the possi- 
bility of any individual cases of poverty within 
our borders? 



Introduction. 15 

In asking this question, we take one thing 
for granted. The nation as a whole is grow- 
ing richer. The poverty which causes so much 
trouble and complaint is individual. In other 
words, many individuals in the land do not 
share in the constantly increasing national 
wealth. These facts are universally acknowl- 
edged, although their significance is often mis- 
understood. Mr. George, in all his works, 
bears testimony to the material prosperity of 
our country, and the most radical socialistic 
writers do the same. In fact, this is the chief 
source of their grievance. If society in general 
were growing poorer, then there would be no 
cause for complaint or even for surprise that 
individuals are poor. But poverty is not na- 
tional; nor are all men growing poorer. The 
charge is made that while one portion of so- 
ciety is daily growing poorer, others are grow- 
ing proportionately richer, day by day. It is 
asserted that the benefits of our increasing na- 
tional wealth are shared by only a part of the 
people, and that those who need it most not 
only fail to obtain any share of it, but are 
actually losing that which they already possess. 
The truth of such a statement has been ques- 
tioned, however, and the most thorough stu- 
dents of social economy assure us that the 
poor are in point of fact the greatest gainers 
by the country's prosperity. But which posi- 



1 6 The Why of Poverty. 

tion soever is the true one, all are agreed on the 
one point, — that poverty is individual. 

In attempting to discover and explain the 
causes of poverty, modern socialists of the 
popular type ignore this fact. They attribute 
poverty to an imperfect system of social or- 
ganization, and to the unequal division of the 
profits of labor. Now, if these were really the 
chief causes of poverty, we should find the 
ranks of the poor recruited constantly from 
particular classes. The demand for reform in 
any national or general system is always based 
on the assertion that it militates against par- 
ticular classes in the community. Those who 
argue in favor of the " Single Tax Doctrine," 
say that the present system works to impoverish 
all who do not own land. Advocates of " Pro- 
tection " and of " Free Trade " alike claim that 
the realization of their ideals would be a finan- 
cial blessing to " working men." And so with 
other proposed changes ; they deal with men in 
classes. Since, therefore, poverty does not 
affect classes of men, but is wholly individual, 
we must seek for its causes in something wholly 
independent of our political or social organ- 
ization. In short, we must seek for individual 
causes. 

No one doubts that our social organization 
is susceptible of improvement at many points. 
Many are willing to acknowledge that there is 
a certain plausibility, to say the least, in the 



Introduction. 17 

theory of the public ownership of land, in the 
" Single Tax Doctrine," in the teachings of 
the " Nationalists." To some the notion of 
" Free Trade " is also very acceptable. In 
many ways it is clearly possible to bring about 
a more equitable distribution of the fruits of 
industry than is secured by existing laws and in- 
stitutions. We can easily see, however, that 
all such changes must be very general in their 
results. They will, when perfect, secure abso- 
lute fairness to all the various classes of so- 
ciety, but they can neither prevent nor cure in- 
dividual poverty. Even the absolutely equal 
division of the aggregate wealth of society 
would not accomplish that result except for a 
brief moment. W. H. Vanderbilt's enormous 
income, divided amongst his employees, would 
not have added a hundred dollars each to their 
annual incomes. Neither would the most 
equitable adjustment of taxes, coupled with the 
fairest division of profits, increase the average 
income of our poorer citizens to any percep- 
tible degree. By all means let us have these 
reforms, so far as they are just and right; but 
let us not expect too much from them. We 
may put them all in practice and yet find that 
poverty has not been cured or appreciably 
diminished. 

During a period of excessively hot weather 
the entire population of a city may feel physi- 
cally disordered. In addition to this general 

2 



1 8 The Why of Poverty. 

depression some individuals may have con- 
tracted distinct diseases through contagion or 
from some other cause. With a return of 
cooler weather the general tone of public health 
will be improved. Doubtless all will be some- 
what better, but the sick ones will not be cured 
without special treatment and medicine suited 
to each disease. In like manner, while we may 
expect a general improvement in the condi- 
tions of society to result from improved social 
organization, we may hope to cure individual 
cases of poverty only by applying remedies 
that are as specific as the disease. 

That there are specific or individual causes 
of poverty in our land, and that they are many 
in number and grievous in their effects, no one 
will have the hardihood to deny. They are 
apparent even to the dullest minds. Their 
comparative importance and extent are, how- 
ever, often underestimated. They are con- 
sidered of trifling significance in comparison 
with political systems and inequalities in the 
general organization of society. Popular re- 
formers for the most part ignore these plain, 
prosaic facts, and go soaring off into the upper 
regions of theory, where they can avail them- 
selves of the enchanting power which distance 
always lends to the view. Yet these common- 
place facts are not so trifling and unimportant 
as many would have us to believe. On the 
contrary, they are the important facts in the 



Introduction. 19 

case. They constitute a force sufficient to 
vitiate whatever good results we may obtain 
from the best regulated system of social or- 
ganization. 

We need mention in this connection only a 
few of the more prominent among these dis- 
turbing forces by way of illustration. 

First among them is the Liquor Traffic. The 
annual amount of this traffic is estimated at 
from seven to nine hundred millions of dollars. 
To this must be added an immense sum for 
indirect expense caused by the traffic, if we 
would measure the full power of the evil. Now 
the effect of this traffic upon the general 
wealth of the nation is not felt in any marked 
degree, although it diverts into useless and 
harmful channels a vast amount of energy that 
would otherwise be employed in valuable pro- 
duction. Neither does it perceptibly affect the 
original distribution of wealth among the 
various classes and individuals of society. It 
does, however, operate after the original dis- 
tribution of the national wealth to entirely de- 
range the results of that distribution, by trans- 
ferring money from one individual to another 
without bringing any equivalent return. Thus 
the wealth of many individuals is diverted 
from its proper use and is practically con- 
sumed. 

The same is true of the Tobacco Traffic. In 
this case the amount of wealth transferred 



20 The Why of Poverty. 

from one group of individuals in the com- 
munity to another is about six hundred mil- 
lions. This is a heavy tax, and one that is 
levied not on any particular class, but upon 
those individuals alone who willingly pay 
tribute to the tyrant. 

The enormous expense attendant upon 
Strikes and other social disturbances, which 
has of late amounted to an average of ten 
million dollars a year in our land, is another 
force which draws the wages out of the 
pockets of individuals, leaving them impover- 
ished while their neighbors grow rich. 

A still greater amount wasted in Useless and 
Expensive Amusements, will account for the 
poverty of others who have received their fair 
share in the first distribution. And others 
scatter their earnings in general extravagance. 

Another force operating in perfect harmony 
with those already mentioned is Speculation. 
In the various exchanges and stock markets 
of our land, more than five hundred million 
dollars change hands every year, representing 
loss on one side and gain on the other in each 
transaction. Closely akin to the work done in 
these centers is that of the Lotteries and 
Gambling Dens, which amounts to one or two 
hundred millions annually. 

We say that America is growing richer at 
the rate of more than a billion dollars every 
year, and we imagine that this means a great 



Introduction. 21 

deal if we could only insure its equitable dis- 
tribution. And so it does. But the few items 
above mentioned give a total of about two bil- 
lion dollars, a sum nearly double the entire in- 
crease of wealth throughout the country. Of 
what avail, therefore, is the utmost care in 
the original distribution of this wealth, when 
it is to be frustrated by such overwhelming 
forces of disturbance after the distribution has 
been effected. 

We may summarize the principal causes of 
poverty among Americans in two words — 
Waste and Speculation. 

Waste takes place in three ways : 1 . The 
absolute destruction of wealth, as in the case 
of war, riots, and the like. 2. The exchange 
of useful for useless commodities, illustrated 
in the liquor and tobacco traffic. 3. The ex- 
penditure of labor which is unproductive, 
which is done by all manufacturers of useless 
and harmful commodities. 

Speculation signifies any form of trade in 
which profits are secured by artificial means, 
and without making any return in the form of 
productive labor. 

Either of these causes would appear to be 
sufficient of itself to account for all the poverty 
in America : and when both causes are present 
and vigorously active, poverty should not be 
a matter of surprise to any one. So long as 
these two forces continue to work unrestrained, 



22 The Why of Poverty, 

we may increase our national wealth ten-fold, 
yes, a hundred-fold, and we may readjust our 
social system never so carefully, and there 
would still be poverty, as hard and as bitter as 
at present. The man who has a million dol- 
lars and throws it away is just as poor as the 
man who had only ten cents and lost it. The 
lottery with a large capital has as many blanks 
as the smaller one, and they are just as blank. 
It is neither true economy nor Christian 
charity to help those who can help themselves. 
He is the truest friend to one in need, who 
teaches him how he may supply his own needs. 
A man who is poor and suffering likes to be 
told that some one else is to blame for his un- 
happy condition ; that he would be all right, if 
his neighbors would treat him justly, or if so- 
ciety were on the right basis. But the most ef- 
fectual way to relieve his suffering is to show 
that its cause and cure lie in his own hands. 
This is undeniably true of the burdened thou- 
sands in our land. All the poverty that results 
from causes other than the two which I have 
named is a mere bagatelle. If the poor people 
of America would with one heart and voice de- 
clare war against these personal habits and 
practices of evil, if they would take a firm stand 
against every form of waste and every custom 
or institution that fosters useless expenditure, 
poverty and suffering would disappear as if by 
magic. Then the weakest might laugh in the 



Introduction. 23 . 

face of oppression and live in comfort despite 
all the intrigues of their fellow-men. If we 
could but proclaim a determined warfare of 
labor against waste and speculation, we should 
soon cease to hear of any strife between labor 
and capital. 



24 The Why of Poverty. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE TRIBUTE TO KING ALCOHOL. 

There are two lines of approach to every 
problem, — the line of theory, and the line of 
fact. When the facts are beyond our reach, 
or are difficult of interpretation, theories may 
be very useful as aids to a final solution of 
the problem in hand. The astronomer, the 
physicist, the biologist, often make theory the 
stepping-stone to valuable discovery. But 
when facts are abundant and plain, theories 
are unnecessary. More than this, they often 
serve to mystify that which is in itself per- 
fectly clear. They obscure the point in ques- 
tion by turning the mind away from the simple 
facts involved. 

At the present time men are approaching 
this problem of poverty along the line of 
theory. They are tickling the popular im- 
agination with high sounding schemes of so- 
cial and political reform. They are searching 
the heavens for causes dim and distant. And 
all the while facts sufficient and more than suf- 
ficient for the most complete solution of the 



The Tribute to King Alcohol. 25 

problem lie close at hand. The facts are plain, 
self-evident, commonplace. And for this very 
reason aspiring minds overlook them or treat 
them with contempt. But the facts remain, and 
while they remain no theory that ignores them 
will avail one iota in the solution of the prob- 
lem. 

Let us approach the problem along the line 
of facts; and let us begin with a great fact 
which obtrudes itself unbidden upon the notice 
of every student of poverty. Other causes there 
are and grievous, but this far surpasses them 
all. It is the giant evil, the Goliath more 
powerful for harm than all the rest of the Phil- 
istine host. 

Three letters embody the secret of a large 
part of the want and destitution in our land. 
Three letters lock the door of comfort, of food, 
of happiness and of hope against millions of 
our people. Three letters contain the germ of 
misery unspeakable, of suffering, of wretched- 
ness, of vice. Three letters suffice to tell us 
what has filled our alms-houses, our asylums, 
our prisons. And those three letters spell the 
word — Rum. 

Other evils are limited in their sphere to 
certain sections or classes, or at least to the 
individuals most directly concerned. But the 
evil of intemperance is universal in its effects. 
Go where you will, you find traces of its work- 
ing. It disturbs the peace of our fairest 



26 The Why of Poverty. 

towns and villages. It invades the sanctity of 
our purest homes. It is constantly extending 
its encroachments, and striving to secure a 
stronger hold upon our social and political 
life. And wherever it comes, it dries up the 
fountains of wealth, it devours the fruits al- 
ready garnered, it levies its tax not only upon 
its victims but upon their neighbors as well. 

Intemperance is more rapid in its working, 
more far-reaching in its influence, and more 
terrible in its effects than any other single im- 
poverishing force in the land. The poverty 
that results from strong drink is poverty in- 
tensified seven-fold. It is degradation, misery, 
hopelessness. War has slain its thousands; 
but alcohol has slain its tens of thousands. 
Worse than this ; it has bound intolerable bur- 
dens upon millions of the living. To poverty 
and starvation it has added shame and disease 
and weakness. If many have died its willing 
victims, many more have been born to an in- 
heritance of disease, and physical and mental 
weakness for which they are in no way respon- 
sible, but whose effects are not mitigated by 
their innocence. Statistics of the " cost of in- 
temperance " only represent the beginnings of 
the cost. The almost infinite succession of 
wastes and losses that follow in the train of 
this evil can never be expressed in figures; 
they can never be traced by investigation; 
they can only be seen and felt. 



The Tribute to King Alcohol. 27 

The people of the United States spend $900,- 
000,000 every year for intoxicating liquors. 
These figures stand unchallenged, and are 
familiar to many readers. May they be re- 
peated and emphasized till every intelligent 
person in the land shall heed them, and shall 
grasp something of their terrible significance. 
Nine hundred million dollars! Think what 
that means. 

It means a yearly tax of nearly twenty dol- 
lars each for every man, woman and child in 
this country; which sum must be paid out of 
the earnings of honest industry. 

It means a comfortable livelihood for at 
least one million families swallowed up in this 
awful whirlpool. 

It means the food and clothing % and com- 
fortable homes of thousands upon thousands 
of the wives and children of working men ex- 
changed for beggary and rags and hovels. 

It means a disturbance of the equilibrium of 
wealth too great to be balanced by any artificial 
means, a cancer in our social and economic 
life that can be cured only by being removed. 

If our national congress were to appropri- 
ate one-tenth of this sum, or even one-hun- 
dredth, for some useless expenditure, it would 
raise a hue and cry in every part of the land, 
and political orators would never tire of re- 
peating the story. If such a tax as this were 
levied even for educational purposes, or for 



28 The Why of Poverty. 

some other object equally worthy, it would be 
denounced as oppression, and men would rebel 
against it. We should hear of indignation 
meetings, of caucuses ; yes, fortunate if we did 
not hear of mobs and riots and violence. And 
most certainly active and efficient measures 
would be taken to prevent such legislation in 
future. 

But when the stupendous facts of the drink 
habit and its results are published the people 
are indifferent and soon grow weary of hear- 
ing them. Instead of rising in hot indignation 
against the evil and its abettors, they vent their 
wrath upon those who are trying to expose and 
cure it, sneering at them as fanatics and cranks, 
or hounding them as the enemies of the poor 
man's pleasure and comfort. The poor man 
does not wish to be told that his own intem- 
perate habits are the cause of his poverty. He 
would rather shut his eyes to the self-evident 
facts, and listen to some specious theory by 
which the blame could be laid on other shoul- 
ders. It is a salve to his conscience, an an- 
esthetic to his wounded manhood; but it does 
not relieve his distress nor feed his starving 
family. 

Thousands upon thousands of the ragged 
ones who murmur against God and their fel- 
low-men, who talk about oppression and in- 
justice, owe their poverty to drunkenness, and 
to that alone. 



The Tribute to King Alcohol. 29 

" ,r Tis true, 'tis pity ; and pity 'tis, 'tis true." 

The half has never been told, nor can be. 
Nothing could be more pertinent to the sub- 
ject in hand. Until we meet and successfully 
cope with the facts involved in this old and 
commonplace story, there is little use in seek- 
ing deeper for causes or inventing new theories 
for cure. 

Not seldom are new theories propounded 
and new economic systems advocated for the 
simple purpose of turning the public mind 
from this great evil, and obscuring its direct 
relation to the problem of poverty. Those who 
draw large revenues from this blood-tax, or 
whose livelihood is derived from the traffic in 
strong drink, pose as the champions of the op- 
pressed, the friends of the poor and down- 
trodden. None more ready than they to talk 
about the injustice of any and every existing 
social system, if by this means they can blind 
the eyes of their patrons while they pick their 
pockets. It is for this reason that socialistic 
movements, strikes, riots, and other like dis- 
turbances, emanate in the great majority of 
cases from the saloons. Here discontent is fo- 
mented and the wildest schemes are formed. 

The old fable tells how some doves invited 
a hawk to protect them against their enemy, 
the kite: and how the hawk, being admitted 
to the dove-cote, slew more of the confiding 



30 The Why of Poverty. 

birds in one day than the kite could have done 
in a year. The rum-seller is the hawk of 
modern society. Loudly declaring that the 
laborer ought to receive higher wages and to 
enjoy more of the comforts of life, he uses 
every art to steal away his present wages and 
the comforts which he already enjoys. And 
all the while he is sapping his power both to 
earn and to enjoy. He is the cause of infi- 
nitely more harm than all injustice and op- 
pression that any man can suffer. 

Discussion of land tenure, tariffs and social 
or political systems are all very well in their 
place ; and they are doubtless more or less im- 
portant : but none of these questions affect the 
financial interests of the working people so seri- 
ously as does this question of intemperance. 
A great deal has been said about the land 
rents of Ireland. The whole world has inter- 
ested itself in the subject. Yet even in Ire- 
land, according to Canon Wilberforce, the 
whiskey bill of the people exceeds the sum 
total of the land rents by more than two and a 
quarter millions of pounds, or nearly twelve 
million dollars. If this be true of Ireland, 
how much more is it true of America! The 
land question in this country is a mere baga- 
telle when compared with this gigantic evil of 
intemperance. Magnify to the utmost the evils 
growing out of the system of private property 
in land, yet will they not amount to a hun- 



The Tribute to King Alcohol. 31 

dredth, no, not to a thousandth part of the 
evils arising from the sale and the use of in- 
toxicating drinks. 

The statistics given regarding the extent of 
the drink habit and its enormous cost are 
startling to every thoughtful reader; but they 
are very inadequate to express the real magni- 
tude of the evil. As well attempt to express 
the cost of a great explosion by the value of 
the dynamite used in the bomb, as to express 
the cost of intemperance by the value of the 
liquor consumed by our people. Every dollar 
of the nation's drink bill represents many dol- 
lars of expense that can only be hinted at, but 
can never be computed or expressed by figures. 
It represents production hampered by intoxi- 
cation. It represents wages lost by idleness. 
It represents life destroyed and property squan- 
dered, disease and crime increased. It repre- 
sents more money spent in asylums, alms- 
houses and jails. It represents a great addi- 
tional expense for government and police pro- 
tection. We cannot follow out all the countless 
ramifications of waste and added expenditure 
that are incurred from this one cause; but we 
can give a few items which may serve to sug- 
gest the immeasurably greater facts hidden 
from view. 

The annual police expenditure of our nation 
is not less than twenty-five millions of dollars. 
Almost the whole of this outlay is directly 



32 The Why of Poverty. 

chargeable to the effects of intemperance. In 
the few communities from which intoxicating 
liquors are entirely banished the police ex- 
pense is merely nominal. The following facts 
are well attested : 

" Vineland, New Jersey, with a population 
of ten thousand, and without a single saloon, 
has passed an entire year without one criminal 
arrest. Greely, Colorado, with three thousand 
inhabitants and without a dram-shop, has no 
use for a police force or for a criminal magis- 
trate. And of Bavaria, Illinois, similarly sit- 
uated, with three thousand population, it is 
said that it has managed to live without a 
drunkard, without a pauper, and without a 
crime." (Dr. Behrends' Socialism and Chris- 
tianity, p. 246.) 

Beyond a peradventure more than three- 
fourths of the worst crimes committed in this 
or in any other civilized land may be 
traced directly to their source in the liquor 
saloon and the drinking habit. And the line 
is usually very short and straight. The crim- 
inal fortifies himself for his crime in the 
saloon. His inspiration and his courage are 
but the manifestations of his partial or com- 
plete intoxication. 

The cost of our asylums, alms-houses and 
jails is enormous. Look at our army of sev- 
enty thousand criminals in the prisons of our 
land, involving an expense of one hundred 



The Tribute to King Alcohol. 33 

and twenty-five million dollars a year, and a 
total loss to the country of more than six 
hundred million dollars. Look again at our 
eighty-nine thousand paupers and thirty-five 
thousand tramps, eighty per cent, of whom, 
with an equal proportion of the criminals, have 
been brought to their present condition 
through intemperance. Of the nearly one 
hundred and seventy thousand insane persons 
in our asylums, fourteen per cent, are the im- 
mediate victims of strong drink, and many 
more doubtless are suffering from its indirect 
effects. Let us also remember the fact that 
there are about tzvo hundred and ten thousand 
men employed in the various departments of 
the liquor traffic, manufacture or sale. Add- 
ing these forces together, we have an army of 
more than four hundred thousand men with- 
drawn, by the influence of intemperance, from 
useful and productive labor to spend their 
time and energy in doing that which is in- 
jurious to mankind. Far better that they 
should be maintained in absolute idleness than 
that they should be engaged in such harmful 
activity. 

To establish the relation between intemper- 
ance and poverty requires no argument. The 
fact obtrudes itself, as we have already said, 
upon every intelligent, observing mind. Wher- 
ever we look w r e see the cause and effect so 
close together that we cannot mistake their con- 

3 



34 The Why of Poverty. 

nection. Drunkenness and poverty ever go 
hand in hand. Were every other cause of pov- 
erty removed, we should still find many cases of 
want and suffering so long as intemperance is 
not banished from the land. 

What need of long arguments and profound 
treatises to account for poverty in the midst 
of plenty, when we have in this one monster 
evil facts sufficient to solve the entire problem ? 
Intemperance is the great curse of our land 
and time. It is the heaviest burden under 
which our industrial civilization staggers. 
The dram-shop is the recruiting station of 
pauperism, the poisonous fountain of lawless- 
ness and crime. As we study the workings 
of intemperance and the methods and devo- 
tion of its minions, the only wonder is that so 
many escape its grasp. Were it not for the 
strongly buoyant forces of nature, the forces 
that make for health, for wealth and for 
righteousness, the very life of this people would 
soon be overwhelmed by this wide spreading 
torrent. 

The waste resulting from intemperance af- 
fects every class of society. King Alcohol 
is no respecter of persons or of social lines. 
He seizes his victims wherever he can find 
them. He lays his blighting hand upon the 
rich and the cultured, and does not even respect 
the sanctity of refined and polished woman- 
hood. He drags a millionaire railroad presi- 



The Tribute to King Alcohol. 35 

dent down to the gutter, strips him of his 
riches and sends him to the lock-up in rags. 
He draws into his toils a beautiful queen of 
society, and makes her a cause of deepest 
shame and sadness to all her friends. He 
seduces the young man who has just become 
heir to thousands, and in a few months all his 
money is gone, and he is an outcast from de- 
cent society. 

But none suffer so generally nor so deeply 
as do the working men and their families. 
Strong drink not only steals away the laborer's 
money, but it steals away his brains, his skill, 
his strength. It hinders his work ; it robs him 
of his wages. Grand Master Powderly of the 
Knights of Labor, in a speech delivered at 
Lynn, Mass., said that in one county in Penn- 
sylvania, during a single year, working men 
had passed eleven million dollars of their 
money over whiskey bars. Does any one doubt 
that there was poverty among those working 
men? It requires no stretch of the imagina- 
tion to picture the squalor and the want in 
their families. We can see their wives and 
children hungry, clad in rags, driven to des- 
peration and sin by cruelty and shame. And 
who was to blame for these things? If you 
were to ask the men who thus wasted their 
earnings, many of them would complain of 
oppressive employers, injustice, dishonesty, 
pitifully low wages, and the like. Men who 



36 The Why of Poverty. 

squander their money for drink are always 
ready to complain of these things, and to at- 
tribute their misery to the wrong-doing of 
others. It is unnecessary to deny their asser- 
tions. They may have been oppressed by their 
employers. They may have been defrauded 
of their just dues. But we are perfectly safe 
in saying that the most skilfully dishonest em- 
ployers could not have kept back from them 
a tithe of the immense sum thus wasted with- 
out raising a storm of indignation that would 
have turned the whole county upside down. 

Intemperance takes the wages of a countless 
host of productive laborers in every part of 
the land and transfers them to a class of idlers 
and unproductive laborers who live in luxury 
and command every comfort and pleasure. 
The poor man often looks with envy upon the 
elegant home or the fine carriage or the beauti- 
ful grounds of the wealthy merchant or 
banker, and says, — " I have as good a right to 
those as he has." But for the luxuries and 
elegant surroundings of the brewer, the dis- 
tiller and the rum-seller, which have been pur- 
chased with the money that should have 
clothed his own wife and children and built 
for himself a comfortable house, he has no 
thought of envy. These men he accounts his 
friends and takes pride in the display which 
they make at his expense. 

Every working man should look upon, all 



The Tribute to King Alcohol. 37 

who have any part in the liquor traffic as his 
worst enemies. Instead of welcoming them as 
his allies in the warfare against fancied op- 
pression, he should brand them as the pests of 
society. If intoxicating liquors were banished 
from our land, and the saloon keeper ceased to 
exert an influence over a large part of our in- 
dustrial army, we should hear much less than 
we do about the struggle between labor and 
capital : for strong drink is a prolific source of 
strife, and has done much to complicate exist- 
ing difficulties. 

The banner of the " Brewers' Association/' 
recently seen in a " Labor procession," boded 
no good to the cause which the procession rep- 
resented. It was as much out of place as 
would be a Confederate flag at the head of a 
United States regiment. So long as honest 
and respectable labor extends the hand of wel- 
come and fellowship to those engaged in any 
department of the liquor traffic there is little 
reason to hope for better times. On the other 
hand, all may well rejoice at the expressions 
of sympathy that have passed between the 
Knights of Labor and the Woman's Christian 
Temperance Union. That were an alliance 
both encouraging and helpful. It bespeaks an 
intelligent understanding of at least one 
serious factor in the social problem of the 
day, and promises a direct and successful war- 



38 The Why of Poverty. 

fare against it. No organization in the world, 
excepting only the Christian Church, the 
mother of all worthy organizations, has done 
so much for laboring men as the Woman's 
Christian Temperance Union; and in its work 
we see one of the grandest forces for the re- 
duction of poverty. 

We may almost say that the problem of in- 
temperance and the problem of poverty are 
one. So closely are they intertwined one with 
the other that they will be solved together. 
Intemperance flourishes because of its hold 
upon the working men. They are the defend- 
ers and upholders of the liquor traffic. From 
them it draws its immense revenue. From 
them it derives its chief power and hope. To 
them it looks for continued approval and en- 
couragement. Until they withdraw their sup- 
port, it cannot be driven from our land. But 
let our great army of laborers once see this 
gigantic evil in its true light, let them declare 
war against it in a body, and its overthrow 
would be quickly accomplished. 

On the other hand, so long as intemperance 
continues, and so long as its advocates and 
abettors are accounted the friends of labor, 
we may not hope to solve the problem of pov- 
erty. For the continuation of intemperance 
means the continuation of poverty, of dissatis- 
faction, of unrest, and of strife. A fitting 



The Tribute to King Alcohol. 39 

motto to place over the door of every saloon 
and brewery and distillery in the world would 
be this, — 

The Poor Ye Have Always With You. 



40 The Why of Poverty. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE CONTINUAL BURNT OFFERING. 

The annual tobacco bill of the American 
people, estimated in round numbers, is six hun- 
dred million dollars. 

A very large slice this of our nation's wealth 
to consume every year in smoke. Think what 
it means — a tax of twelve dollars a head upon 
the entire population, women and children as 
well as men. A sum equal to the value of all 
the bread-stuff s manufactured in the country, 
or to the combined value of the meat and 
woolen goods produced, and six times as great 
as the annual expenditure for public schools. 

The entire expense of carrying on our na- 
tional government is only two hundred and 
fifty million dollars a year. The users of 
tobacco spend, therefore, between two and 
three times as much in the indulgence of a 
useless and hurtful habit as the whole nation 
spends for government. And we fail to ap- 
preciate the full force of this comparison un- 
less we emphasize the fact that the expense of 
government is distributed as fairly as possible 



The Continual Burnt Offering. 41 

among all the taxpayers of the land, while the 
tobacco bill is borne by a fraction of the peo- 
ple. A census of tobacco users, could it be 
taken, would show that the tax per capita, in- 
stead of being twelve dollars, is probably more 
than twelve times twelve dollars. 

This burdensome and impoverishing tribute 
is paid willingly in many cases by the very 
men who are most penurious in their expendi- 
tures for things necessary and beneficial. It 
knows no law of proportion, but often falls 
most heavily upon those whose wages are 
wholly inadequate to their needs. And the 
cloud of tobacco-smoke continually polluting 
the air of our streets and many of our homes 
represents the want of necessaries and com- 
forts and privileges of a higher order for the 
majority of smokers and their families. 

Reformers and economists are on the alert 
as never before to discover and expose all 
waste in municipal or national administration, 
all inequality or injustice in the social organ- 
ism, all class oppression or public dishonesty; 
but personal wastes, such as the tobacco habit, 
receive scant attention from scientific minds. 
They are left for the most part to the mercy 
of hobby riders and petty enthusiasts. He 
will be a true benefactor to his fellows who 
shall raise the subject of Personal Economy 
to the plane of a science that may prove as at- 
tractive as Political Economy or Social 



42 The Why of Poverty. 

Economy. For, while it is praiseworthy to 
strive for a more equitable condition of things 
in politics and society and in business, the 
cure of personal wastes is more immediately 
and permanently profitable. The Monetary 
Conference, or any imaginable tariff bill, or 
Mr. Bellamy's scheme of nationalization, will 
have far less influence upon the question of 
poverty than this single habit, the use of to- 
bacco. 

A certain class of small-minded economists 
and demagogues may often be heard inveigh- 
ing against the great waste of money through 
the churches. They talk of the immense sums 
expended in religious work at home and sent 
away to foreign missions, which they declare 
is needed for physical comforts, and ought to 
be given to the suffering and starving poor. 
They hear the report of some missionary so- 
ciety or they listen to the appeal of some 
church for contributions, and they exclaim 
with Judas of old, — " To what purpose is this 
waste ? " And yet the total atpount expended 
for religious purposes, both at home and 
abroad, by all the churches of our land is less 
than fifteen millions of dollars. What is this 
in comparison with the six hundred millions 
spent for tobacco? 

The immediate outlay of money much more 
nearly represents the actual waste in the case 
of tobacco than it does in the case of strong 



The Continual Burnt Offering. 43 

drink. Tobacco is not such a violent disturber 
of public peace and industrial prosperity as is 
alcohol. It does not drag in its train such a 
host of attendant evils. It does not so quickly 
nor so seriously impair the powers of the in- 
dividual laborer. However subtle and far- 
reaching may be its indirect influence, we can- 
not attribute directly to this source any great 
share of the criminal and pauper expenses, al- 
though it is a rare thing to find either a male 
criminal or a male pauper who is not addicted 
to the inveterate use of tobacco. And in our 
penal institutions this fact is recognized by in- 
cluding tobacco in the regular rations of each 
criminal. To make our bill against this evil 
complete, however, we must add a few items 
to the original sum which are not altogether 
insignificant. 

Nearly seven hundred and twenty-five thou- 
sand acres of valuable land are taken from the 
production of useful crops and devoted to the 
culture of tobacco, one of the most exhausting 
of all crops. 

More than eighty-five thousand men and 
zvomen are employed in the culture and manu- 
facture of tobacco, whose energies might be 
devoted to useful production. 

Let these seven hundred and twenty-five 
thousand acres of land be devoted to the rais- 
ing of wheat or other necessary products, and 
let the toil of the eighty-five thousand workers 



44 The Why of Poverty. 

be directed to useful ends, and these alone 
would provide abundant food for all the starv- 
ing ones in the land, and no one would be the 
poorer. We cannot afford to. maintain so 
great an army of non-producers. 

Very many persons fail to appreciate the 
economic argument against the liquor and to- 
bacco traffic, because the money expended for 
either of these habits remains in the country. 
They reason that so long as the money is ex- 
pended within our borders, there can be no 
serious loss, but rather a certain gain from in- 
creased trade and quickened circulation. This 
is the position of those who oppose the prohi- 
bition of the liquor traffic in their own com- 
munity on the ground that it will carry trade 
and money to neighboring communities where 
liquor is sold. If poverty were a national or 
community matter, the argument might have 
some weight. But since our nation and our 
communities are not poor, since poverty is 
solely an individual matter, such reasoning 
shoots wide of the mark. 

There is a common notion that exchange 
means trade and trade means wealth. But 
trade is not wealth, neither does it pro- 
duce wealth. On the contrary any trade 
that is not absolutely necessary is a con- 
sumer of wealth. The most rapid circulation 
and thriving commerce that is anything else 
than a mere channel for the quickest exchange 



The Continual Burnt Offering. 45 

of necessary productions makes men poorer 
not richer. In any case, trade does not add 
one penny to the original amount of wealth; 
and at its very best commerce is only a means 
of lessening wastes that would be very great 
without it. 

To this school of economists that believes 
in the wealth producing powers of trade be- 
longed a certain man and his good wife. As 
they were both fond of an occasional glass, 
they purchased, one day, a large keg of beer 
with which to gratify their appetite. The wife, 
however, being of a thrifty turn, desired to 
make good the cost of the beer; so she sug- 
gested that for every drink taken by either a 
dime should be paid to the other, and thus they 
would have money enough to purchase an- 
other keg when the first was exhausted. Per- 
haps they might even have something over. 
The husband readily assented, for like John 
Gilpin, — 

" O'er joyed was he to find, 
That though on pleasure she was bent, 
She had a frugal mind." 

But one dime remained after paying for the 
original purchase, and that was in possession 
of the husband. Realizing the economy and 
possible profitableness of the plan, he soon 
drank a mug of the beer, and gave the dime to 
his wife. She, in turn, took a draught, re- 



46 The Why of Poverty. 

turning the coin to her husband. This pro- 
cess was repeated with greater or less fre- 
quency till the keg was empty, and the shrewd 
couple were amazed to find themselves in pos- 
session of but a single dime, whereas they had 
expected to recover the full cost of the keg 
with a reasonable retailer's profit.. There had 
been continuous and brisk circulation. Trade 
had been good in this limited circle. But the 
dime was only a dime after all. It had not in- 
creased in size or value-, but was rather some- 
what worn by much handling. As for the 
empty keg, that was an object lesson in the 
total consumption of wealth. 

" This fable teaches/' as ^Esop would say, 
precisely what is the outcome of the great 
traffic in tobacco and intoxicating liquors that 
is going on all over our land. Short-sighted 
economists, under the tutelage of those most 
interested in the traffic, declare it to be a source 
of wealth to the country and a blessing to the 
struggling masses of the people. Men look 
with pleasure upon the brisk trade, and fancy 
that it indicates good times and comfort for 
the poor. Influential citizens and men who ex- 
ert a controlling influence in matters of gov- 
ernment are misled by the specious argument. 
They hesitate to discourage these lines of 
trade, either by law or public opinion, lest 
they should injure the prosperity of our com- 
merce and block the wheels of trade. And 



The Continual Burnt Offering. 47 

this, they imagine, would be a serious injury 
to the poor. At least, they know that many 
would so consider it, and they dare not cham- 
pion the truth in the face of popular opinion. 

In point of fact it were far better for the 
poor if these forms of trade were done away. 
By them the people are being daily impover- 
ished. The earnings of productive labor are 
being exchanged for that which not only fails 
to satisfy human need, but which also brings 
after it a host of positive evils. The money 
that should procure food and clothing and 
homes and the highest forms of comfort for 
working men and their families, and which 
should make them rich, goes into the pockets 
of the non-producing tobacco dealer and rum- 
seller. 

Wealth is created by production not by 
trade. Poverty will be relieved, not by stimu- 
lating trade, but by stimulating useful pro- 
duction, and by restricting trade to the neces- 
sary exchange of such production. 

Doubtless many will be ready to question 
this parallelism between the liquor traffic and 
the tobacco trade. They will say that it is not 
just to wed nicotine and alcohol, or to classify 
the smoker with the drunkard. Yet it is not 
difficult to show that these two habits, with 
their corresponding lines of traffic, belong to- 
gether in an economic sense if not morally. 
And in these pages we are discussing every 



48 The Why of Poverty. 

question primarily from an economic stand- 
point. 

That the tobacco habit is a great waste, 
and only waste, no one can deny. Tobacco 
cannot be classed with other luxuries : for its 
use and effects are wholly distinct. Indul- 
gence in luxuries, properly so called, is regu- 
lated to a great degree by the wealth of the 
individual. While many of the poor are doubt- 
less extravagant in the matter of luxuries, and 
frequently purchase things which they cannot 
afford, still it would be difficult, or rather im- 
possible, to mention any other single gratifi- 
cation to obtain which any appreciable number 
of persons habitually deprive themselves and 
their families of the necessaries of life. Even 
among the less thrifty and intelligent classes, 
luxuries in general are made secondary to 
necessities and comforts. But the tobacco 
habit knows no such law. Like the appetite 
for strong drink, it speedily gains a certain 
control over those who indulge it and sets 
at naught all considerations of economy and 
true wisdom. Once it is admitted into the 
life tobacco becomes a daily requirement, even 
when it must be purchased at the expense of 
food and clothing and the other most common 
necessaries of life. 

Among the very poorest classes in our land 
the tobacco habit is well-nigh universal. Go 
into the poorer quarters of our cities and you 



The Continual Burnt Offering. 49 

will see women and children pinched with 
hunger and wanting not only the comforts 
but also the merest decencies of home, while 
the husband and father spends his money for 
tobacco and strong drink. A male pauper 
who does not use tobacco would be a rara avis 
indeed. The burly tramp, begging for food 
or for a little money to pay railroad fares, 
while a dirty pipe sticks in his mouth or his 
cheeks are puffed out with a quid of tobacco, 
is an every-day sight. A tramp will go with- 
out decent clothes; he may even go without 
food at times : but he never goes without to- 
bacco. 

What claim has the tobacco user upon the 
benevolence of his fellow-men? Why should 
any man give food to a creature with his mouth 
full of tobacco? Is it to be expected that those 
who exercise the most rigid economy and de- 
prive themselves of many a luxury in order 
that they may secure for themselves and their 
families pleasant homes and a fair competence 
will be eager to share the results of their thrift 
and care with those who but for their daily 
wastes would enjoy them also? 

Many a man has spent a comfortable living 
upon this wasteful habit of smoking. The 
reason men fail to realize the serious extent of 
the w r aste is because it is made up of small 
amounts. And this is the essential difference 
between thrift and thriftlessness, that the 
4 



50 The Why of Poverty. 

thrifty man respects little things while the 
thriftless man does not. When Samuel 
Budgett had become famous as the Merchant 
Prince of London, he said to a clerk who had a 
habit of wasting odd moments, — " If you 
w T aste five minutes, that is not much ; but prob- 
ably if you waste five minutes yourself, you 
lead some one else to waste five minutes, and 
that makes ten. If a third follow your ex- 
ample, that makes a quarter of an hour. Now 
there are about one hundred an4 eighty men 
employed in my establishment, and if every 
one wasted five minutes a day, what would it 
come to ? It would be fifteen hours, and fifteen 
hours a day would be ninety hours, which is 
about eight days' working time in a week, 
and in a year would be four hundred days. 
Do you think we could ever stand a waste 
like that?" 

Of course there are hundreds and thou- 
sands of men who are in a sense quite able to 
afford the luxury of tobacco. They can in- 
dulge their unnatural appetite to the full with- 
out depriving themselves or those dependent 
upon them of any needed comfort. They can 
throw away a part of their income without feel- 
ing it. But these are the few. The great ma- 
jority of men have no money to spare. Every 
dollar that the average laborer spends for to- 
bacco means a dollar less for wholesome food 



The Continual Burnt Offering. 51 

and comfortable clothing, for books, for home 
adornment, for education, for travel. 

Granting that the evil is not as great as that 
resulting from the intemperate use of strong 
drink; still it is a serious evil. The fact is 
self-evident that many cases of poverty would 
be instantly relieved if the poor would give 
over the use of tobacco. But how induce them 
to do this ? The most lucid instruction upon the 
subject will avail nothing. Men can never be 
educated out of bad habits. The only effective 
force that can be brought to bear is the power 
of example. 

Popular habits depend for their extent and 
permanence upon the patronage of the wealthy 
and respectable. Let those who can afford 
this luxury discard the use of tobacco, and 
the poor would soon cast it aside. But so 
long as the wealthy and comfortable use to- 
bacco, the poor will use it too. In every re- 
formatory crusade an ounce of example is 
worth many pounds of instruction and advice. 
To increase the wages of a man made poor by 
indulgence in a wasteful habit affords only 
partial and temporary relief. Much better is 
it by example and precept to induce him to 
cease from the habit which is the cause of his 
want. By so doing his poverty is permanently 
relieved, the evil is cured, and money is saved 
for better uses. 

In a broader sense the tobacco habit is in- 



52 The Why of Poverty. 

jurious to all, to the rich as well as to the poor, 
and no one can really afford the indulgence. 
Not to speak of the poisonous effects upon the 
system of every individual who indulges the 
habit regularly, we must not forget the in- 
direct effects of any evil that finds an entrance 
into the great brotherhood of mankind. For 
the fact of human brotherhood becomes more 
emphatic and more vital with every advancing 
step of our civilization. In these days it is 
true in a sense more important than ever be- 
fore that " no man liveth to himself." A habit 
that injures a large number of individuals in- 
jures the entire community. If my neighbor 
suffers in consequence of his wastefulness, I 
suffer with him. The intelligent people of 
America, yes, of the world, have long felt the 
force of this principle in its bearing upon the 
question of strong drink. Why should we not 
recognize its bearing upon all similar ques- 
tions, even when they happen to be less start- 
ling in the degree of evil which they cause? 
This habit which the civilized world received 
as a legacy from the untutored savage should 
be branded as unworthy the Christian enlight- 
enment of the dawning twentieth century. 

The ancient Hebrews and some of the hea- 
then nations kept a perpetual fire burning on 
the altar of their temples in which were con- 
sumed the flesh of animals, the offerings of 
the people to their divinity. From numberless 



The Continual Burnt Offering. 53 

human temples in our land, more sacred far 
than any pile of stone adorned with gold, 
there arises a continual cloud of smoke. Not 
animals are the offerings laid on the altar ; but 
homes, books, travel, comforts, luxuries, edu- 
cation, even necessary food and clothing. 
And these are offered, year after year, to the 
god of appetite. And the cost of this offering, 
levied largely upon the wages of the poor, is 
six hundred million dollars a year. 



54 The Why of Poverty. 



CHAPTER IV. 

EXPENSIVE AMUSEMENTS. 

The amount of capital invested in theaters 
and opera houses in New York and Boston is 
about ten million dollars. So says the Census 
Report. The amount thus invested throughout 
the entire country is not less than one hundred 
and fifty millions. 

An immense sum this to be permanently 
locked up in places of amusement. An im- 
mense sum to be withdrawn from productive 
investment. To pay for so large an outlay and 
to cover the necessary expenses incurred in 
connection with every entertainment, the re- 
ceipts at these places must be enormous. And 
so they are, as the following facts will show. 

The gross receipts at one of the Boston 
theaters durng the twelve weeks' course of a 
single play averaged more than ten thousand 
dollars a week. The annual receipts at the 
same theater are considerably more than a 
quarter of a million dollars. The sum ex- 
pended by the American people on the single 
amusement of theater-going is not less than 
twenty-five millions of dollars a year. 



Expensive Amusements. 55 

That veteran amuser of the public, Mr. P. 
T. Barnum, furnishes the following facts in 
his autobiography. For exhibiting Tom 
Thumb one year in America he received one 
hundred and fifty thousand dollars. When 
he brought Jenny Lind to this country his 
gross receipts for six months were something 
more than seven hundred and twelve thousand 
dollars. The total number of tickets sold to 
his various exhibitions, exclusive of his lec- 
tures and a few special entertainments, aggre- 
gated almost eighty-two and a half millions, 
during forty years of his career as a showman. 
At a very moderate estimate, his gross receipts 
amounted to an average of more than a million 
dollars a year. 

Now-a-days every city and considerable 
town has its baseball nine, with players re- 
tained at good salaries. Thousands of dollars 
are taken at each League game as gate money, 
and many more thousands are lost in gam- 
bling. The total amount taken at the grounds 
of the Boston baseball club is estimated at 
one hundred and sixty thousand dollars in a 
single season. And at three of the pool rooms 
in the city, where much of the gambling on 
these games is done, over a million dollars 
changed hands in one year. 

A thriving business is carried on in these 
pool rooms and in the billiard halls which 
abound on every hand. In them many of our 



56 The Why of Poverty. 

young men spend their evenings in play. They 
are usually found in connection with a liquor 
saloon, and here the proprietor takes from his 
patrons the money that he failed to win over 
the bar. No figures are adequate to set forth 
the amount thus wasted; but many a young 
man knows from bitter experience the impov- 
erishing result of these evenings in the pool 
room. 

The roller-skating mania, which swept over 
the country a few years ago, absorbed millions 
of dollars which cannot be accurately esti- 
mated. The fashion quickly passed away, but 
various other forms of amusement now accom- 
plish the same end. 

Most of these forms of amusement are found 
only in the larger towns and cities; but even 
our country districts have their share in con- 
tributing to similar wastes. Every summer, 
traveling shows of various kinds visit all the 
large villages, and carry away from each a 
few thousand dollars, the hard-earned savings 
of the farmers and tradesmen. 

The greater part of the money thus ex- 
pended for mere amusement comes from the 
pockets of the poor people of the land. But 
you will doubtless say, Do not the poor need 
amusement as well as the rich? Yes, is not 
the need even greater in their case, since they 
have so few home comforts and enjoyments, 
while their lives are filled with arduous toil? 



Expensive Amusements. 57 

Surely we ought to encourage them and 
help them to get all the pleasure they can 
in life, instead of frowning upon them. True; 
and if the poor would be as moderate and 
as wise in seeking amusement as the ma- 
jority of their more wealthy neighbors, 
they would not be so poor. It is a well-known 
fact that the poor spend a great deal more 
proportionately for amusements than the rich. 
And it is this habit of spending that makes 
them poor. Go to any of our popular play- 
houses, or to a ball game, or to a fair, or to a 
horse race, and whom will you find there? 
Many a rich spendthrift, it is true. Not a few 
wealthy pleasure seekers. But mingling with 
these, and vieing with them in the expenditure 
of money, are crowds of men and women who 
scarcely know where their next meal is to come 
from; scores of persons who have spent a 
large portion of their week's wages for one 
day's sight-seeing or one evening's entertain- 
ment; young men who cannot pay their debts 
with the small salaries they earn; girls who 
must sacrifice health and delay the purchase of 
needed clothing that they may have their 
amusement; families that know nothing of real 
home comfort because the money which would 
purchase permanent satisfaction is frittered 
away on the useless and unsatisfying pleasures 
of an hour. These and such as these make 
up the greater part of every concourse at the 



58 The Why of Poverty. 

popular pleasure resorts; and it is from the 
contributions of poverty that the managers 
derive their income. 

Among the wealthy of our land are a goodly 
number who have gotten their wealth by amus- 
ing their fellow-men. The salary of a theatri- 
cal star varies from five hundred to fifteen 
hundred dollars a night. The various classes 
of persons employed in furnishing public 
amusement number more than twenty thou- 
sand. And they are very properly included in 
the class of unproductive laborers. Not only 
do they, with few exceptions, add nothing to 
the wealth of society; but they are in many 
ways a drain upon its resources and an injury 
to the community. The life of a professional 
player of any kind, whether stage actor, base- 
ball player, or buffoon, is demoralizing to the 
individual character and harmful in its influ- 
ence on the community. This is true from 
both an economic and a moral point of view. 
If we demand that every person shall make 
some adequate return to society for the wages 
paid him, certainly the great majority of these 
amusers of the public can find no worthy place 
in Christian society. 

The loose morals of the theater are prover- 
bial. Even the vocation of a professional 
singer is demoralizing to many, although that 
is certainly one of the highest forms of amuse- 
ment, and scarcely to be called an amusement. 



Expensive Amusements. 59 

And as we descend the scale, and come to the 
lower classes of amusement, we find an even 
lower state of morals. What self-respecting 
man could devote his life and energy to the 
useless profession of ball-playing? Or who 
expects to find good examples of morality and 
noble manhood among professional horse 
jockeys? The useless professions are demor- 
alizing to those who engage in them ; and they 
are in their turn demoralizing in their in- 
fluence upon those who associate with and ad- 
mire them. 

Yet we would not decry all amusement. 
Very far from it. Rational amusement or 
recreation is essential to strong, vigorous and 
healthy life. It restores the weary body and 
the exhausted mind, and gives new power for 
useful service. The life which admits no rec- 
reation becomes monotonous and lags in its 
work. " All work and no play makes Jack 
a dull boy," is a proverb that applies to boys 
of the maturest years. He works best who 
plays best when he plays, who can at proper 
times throw off w T ork and care and anxiety 
and give himself heartily to simple amusement. 
He who never plays grows old before his 
time, and breaks down before his life work 
is half completed. 

On the other hand, the life that is too much 
given up to amusement becomes idle and effem- 
inate. Some one has well said that " Amuse- 
ments should fill the chinks of life, but nothing 



60 The Why of Poverty. 

more." Yet how many lives make amusement 
their chief end. To have a good time is the 
object of principal thought and care. Work 
and duty are mere secondary considerations. 
How many are more wearied by their amuse- 
ments than by any work they ever do. It is a 
well known and universally attested fact that 
laboring people who make the Sabbath a day 
of amusement and pleasure instead of devoting 
it to sacred rest, come to their work on Mon- 
day morning in a worse condition both physi- 
cally and mentally than upon any other morn- 
ing during the week. And this is true not 
only of those who spend the day in drinking 
and carousal, but also of those who make it a 
day of pleasure trips, picnics and the like. 
i^The Sunday excursions and concerts and enter- 
tainments that are advertised as a great bless- 
ing to working people, are for the most part 
an injury to those whom they attract, draining 
their pockets of their small earnings, and at the 
same time depriving them of much needed rest 
and quiet. 

An excessive love of popular amusements 
has heralded the downfall of many a nation. 
Witness the theaters and games and gladiato- 
rial contests of ancient Rome, and the bull-fights 
and similar amusements of modern Spain. It 
was a shrewd saying, whoever said it, that 
" the man who first brought ruin on the Roman 
people was he who pampered them by largesses 



Expensive Amusements. 61 

and amusements." Amusements, when too 
freely indulged, drain the public as well as the 
private purse ; they weaken national character ; 
they turn the mind of the people away from 
useful subjects and make life unreal and mean- 
ingless. 

Doubtless the old puritans and pilgrims 
erred in the opposite direction, excluding rec- 
reation and amusement too rigidly from their 
life and making it too solemn and colorless. 
Yet they developed a moral strength and a depth 
of character that are leavening our entire na- 
tion to this day. Better, far better, the exces- 
sive seriousness of the Pilgrim Fathers that 
could not brook the least degree of levity, than 
the shallow and frivolous nature that is per- 
petually seeking for amusement and that has 
no resources of enjoyment within itself. 

The love of much amusement betokens in 
the individual a thriftless nature, and an un- 
worthy indifference to the grand purposes and 
possibilities of human life. It indicates a false 
ideal of manhood, an ideal of selfish enjoyment 
rather than of active and useful accomplish- 
ment. 

It is not unreasonable then to include amuse- 
ments among the appreciable causes of poverty 
in our land. They divert not a little money 
from useful purposes. They cause a waste 
of much time and effort that else might be 
profitably spent. They require many persons 



62 The Why of Poverty. 

to withdraw their skill and energy from pro- 
ductive labor and to devote their lives to labor 
that is unproductive. This waste is closely 
allied to those of strong drink and tobacco. 
It makes a serious addition to the expenses of 
many a hard-working young man and woman. 
It empties the purse of many a young couple 
just starting out in life with small capital. 

While the " Anti-Poverty Society " is busy 
searching for a Grand, Automatic, Instantan- 
eous and Universal Poverty Eradicator, many 
a sufferer might be relieved by the use of more 
common-place remedies. In ninety-nine cases 
out of every hundred poverty is the result of 
negligence in trifling matters rather than any 
great wrong or injustice. The little foxes 
spoil the vines. The little leaks drain the 
purse. Even such trifling sums as are spent 
on amusement steal away the margin of many 
small incomes. If we could but stop these 
small leaks, no great cure for poverty would be 
needed. 



The American Weakness. 63 



CHAPTER V. 

THE AMERICAN WEAKNESS. 

We are looking for the Social Millennium. 
It has not come yet; but many self-inspired 
prophets are telling us what it will be like when 
it does come. Mr. Bellamy has drawn a pic- 
ture of this glorious epoch when society shall 
be one grand eight-day clock, and when pov- 
erty shall be no more. The theories pro- 
pounded in his book, Looking Backward 
have found a ready acceptance in many minds. 
And what is his specific for the cure of pov- 
erty ? Simply the allotment of an equal annual 
income to each individual. The idea is plaus- 
ible and widely accepted. But every truly in- 
telligent student of social questions knows that 
it is delusive. We are confronted every day 
with facts which prove that even if there were 
an absolutely equal distribution of wealth at 
the beginning of each year many would be in 
abject poverty before the year was half gone. 

Poverty or wealth is not determined by in- 
come alone. Expenditure is a factor at least 
equally significant. He who earns ten dollars 
a week, and by the expenditure of eight dol- 



64 The Why of Poverty. 

lars secures for himself and those dependent 
upon him all needful comforts, is rich. To earn 
ten dollars and obtain what is necessary by the 
expenditure of the same is present competence. 
To earn ten dollars and spend eleven, or to 
earn ten dollars and with that sum fail to obtain 
things necessary, is poverty. Wealth and pov- 
erty therefore depend less upon the absolute 
amount of one's income than upon the use 
made of it. They grow out of the proportion 
(or disproportion) between income and ex- 
penditure. In the last analysis they have noth- 
ing at all to do with money, but rather with the 
supply of human needs. 

The miser who starves himself and pinches 
his family in order that he may increase his 
hoard of gold is poor although he may count 
his glittering coins by the millions. Poverty 
implies a want of the necessaries and comforts 
of life, or a lack of power to obtain them. It 
matters not how this want is brought about. 
It signifies nothing that one enjoys numberless 
luxuries or is abundantly supplied with the 
commonly accepted symbols of wealth; these 
are in themselves without meaning. If the 
necessary things such as good food and cloth- 
ing cannot be procured, there is poverty. 

This fact is often ignored. Families live 
in continual poverty, or what is worse, in a 
state of chronic and incurable debt, because they 
displace necessaries with luxuries, and expend 



The American Weakness. 65 

their earnings upon things they could well 
enough do without until they have little or 
nothing left for the purchase of those things 
which health and life and decency absolutely 
require. 

In one of our New England towns a family 
was found in deepest want, without food or 
clothing or fire. The town officers at once 
gave them money enough for a week's supply 
of food and fuel, and procured for them needed 
clothing. Instead of living for a week upon 
the means thus obtained, the family expended 
the entire sum of money in food and candy and 
fruit, inviting their cronies to a grand feast; 
and in twenty-four hours were as destitute 
as before. A benevolent woman gave to an- 
other suffering family money sufficient to re- 
lieve their distress for several weeks. What 
was her surprise and disgust, on visiting them 
a couple of days later, at being presented with 
a fine photograph of each member of the grate- 
ful family ; the most of her money having gone 
for these instead of being expended for food. 

This sacrifice of the necessary for the un- 
necessary, of comfort for luxury, of permanent 
good for temporary enjoyment or trifling 
gratification, is a wide-spread evil. Among 
the pauper class it is almost universal. But it 
is by no means confined to them, or even to 
those who are called poor. It is always an evil, 
although in some cases the amounts involved 

5 



66 The Why of Poverty. 

may seem insignificant, and in others the indi- 
viduals may be considered abundantly able to 
afford such indulgence. In point of fact no 
individual, however wealthy, can afford it. 
The commsunity cannot afford it. 

Extravagance is a peculiarly American 
weakness. It is the besetting sin of our people 
in every class and condition. It reveals itself 
in a variety of forms. Among the most com- 
mon is a reckless prodigality in the use of 
money. In the early days of California, when 
adventurers were deriving immense fortunes in 
a few months from her newly discovered gold 
fields, the rich metal was so abundant that men 
did not want anything less valuable, and the 
small silver and copper coins used in the other 
states were tossed contemptuously aside by the 
traders on the Gold Coast. 

The same spirit appears in more or less mod- 
ified forms in all parts of our land. The real 
value and cumulative power of small sums is 
not recognized and they are allowed to go to 
waste or are frittered away carelessly. That 
this is characteristic of our nation has passed 
into a proverb. Among travelers on the conti- 
nent of Europe, Americans are noted for their 
free-handedness in money matters; and for- 
eigners do not fail to profit by it. First-class 
railway carriages are patronized by kings and 
Americans, say the thrifty people of the Old 
World. 



The American Weakness. 67 

This prodigality is not confined to the rich. 
It is characteristic of every class. In fact we 
might say that it is found most often among 
the poor. With us rank is in a great measure 
determined by external appearances. It is 
therefore the natural ambition of every man 
and woman to live as well and to dress as well 
as others in the same community. " We must 
keep up appearances/' is the motto of the mul- 
titude. Instead of regulating expenditure by 
income, the outlay is not infrequently looked 
upon as an investment made to secure a higher 
position in society and a larger income. For 
this reason the expenses are permitted to run 
in advance of the earnings, in the hope that 
the latter will speedily overtake the former. 
In the great majority of such cases the invest- 
ment proves a failure ; and when the meshes of 
indebtedness are drawn close poverty is the 
inevitable result. Such people have only them- 
selves to blame, however. Their poverty is 
the direct and most natural result of their false 
and dishonest mode of living. The money 
which they have recklessly expended in need- 
less externals, wisely husbanded, would have 
kept them from want. 

If the evils resulting from extravagance were 
confined in their effects to the extravagant 
themselves we might well keep silence and let 
the disease work its own cure; but unfortu- 
nately this is not the case. The prudent always 



68 



The Why of Poverty. 



suffer more or less with the imprudent; the 
thrifty with the unthrifty. Persons and 
families go on year after year living beyond 
their means and rolling up a mountain of debt. 
When at length their credit is exhausted and 
the crash comes, as come it must, all to whom 
they are indebted suffer through their inability 
to pay their debts. How many families we 
may find in every community living in luxury 
and elegance, always dressing in the height of 
fashion and decking their tables with the ear- 
liest delicacies of the season, yet never paying 
a debt until driven to it by law. In this way 
they manage to equal their more wealthy neigh- 
bors in appearance, while their creditors, poor 
washer-women, domestics, small traders, and 
the like, pay the bills. 

Economy is not a popular virtue. The 
words, " I cannot afford it," are the bete noir 
of Americans, and many prefer dishonest in- 
dulgence to a frank acknowledgment of finan- 
cial limitation. Economy is branded as 
" meanness," and free-handed prodigality, even 
when exercised at the expense of honesty, mas- 
querades as generosity or benevolence. 

Extravagance does not, however, necessarily 
signify living beyond one's means, in the com- 
mon acceptation of that phrase. Every use- 
less expenditure, even by the most wealthy, is 
extravagance, and tends to the increase of 
poverty just as surely as does every expenditure 



The American Weakness. 69 

that is not based on the ability to pay. Our 
country will become more prosperous, wealth 
will be more equally distributed, and poverty 
will be less frequent and less severe, just in pro- 
portion as men of every class and of all degrees 
of wealth become more truly and wisely eco- 
nomical in their manner of living the opposite 
results inevitably follow the lavish and careless 
expenditure of money on the part of any class. 

By not a few modern agitators and pseudo- 
reformers the free and unrequited expenditure 
of wealth is extolled as a virtue, or at the very 
least as a real blessing to the world. Again 
and again it is said of some reckless spendthrift, 
" If his wealth does no good to himself, it is 
certainly a great benefit to his neighbors." 
That which is obvious waste on the part of the 
individual is supposed to be a real source of 
wealth to his friends and the community at 
large. A young man spends his money freely 
for wine, cigars, fast horses, amusements, and 
other things of like character, or a lady buys 
many and costly dresses far beyond her need, 
expensive jewelry, elegant ornaments, and the 
thoughtless multitude rejoices in the notion that 
this extravagance makes trade for the mer- 
chant and furnishes remunerative employment 
for a great number of needy workers. 

A similar notion has led to the suggestion 
that in times of financial distress the govern- 
ment ought to create sinecure offices and employ 



70 The Why of Poverty. 

men to perform unnecessary labor at good 
wages as a means of employing idle hands and 
relieving poverty. 

Born of the same parentage is the popular 
doctrine of radical socialists and anarchists that 
the poor could be made comfortable and that 
poverty could be eliminated by confiscating the 
wealth of the Vanderbilts and the Goulds and 
the Rothschilds and distributing it gratuitously 
among the poor. 

Short-sighted economy. No, rather, ridic- 
ulous extravagance ! All such ideas are diamet- 
rically opposed to the first principles of econ- 
omy. Wealth and comfort can never come from 
waste under any circumstances. The wealthy 
prodigal does not really benefit any one by his 
needless expenditure. On the contrary he is a 
source of unmitigated evil. By his example 
he leads many poorer men to involve themselves 
in debts far beyond their means of payment. 
If he supplies work to a few needy laborers it 
is unproductive work which is demoralizing to 
society and ultimately impoverishing to the 
very classes it is supposed to benefit. Being 
idle himself, he adds nothing to the aggregate 
wealth of the world, and every person employed 
by him in busy uselessness is hindered from 
adding to that wealth. 

The same is true of sinecure offices and use- 
less labor performed for government at good 
salaries. It means simply the circulation of 



The American Weakness. 71 

money without any increase of those things 
which satisfy human need. Now every indi- 
vidual in the land may possess millions of 
money, but if there be a scarcity of food and 
clothing, if the easily acquired riches lead to a 
cessation of productive labor, there would be 
poverty and starvation as never before, even 
among those who had plenty of money in their 
pockets. 

And if we were to distribute the millions of 
the very wealthy among their starving brethren, 
what would be the result? A few hungry 
mouths might be filled for a day; but soon 
would come a state of affairs worse than has 
ever yet been known. It is a scheme for re- 
lieving poverty which blindly ignores the causes 
and nature of poverty. As well attempt to 
cure a man of raging fever by rolling him 
naked in a snow-bank. Just as surely as such 
treatment would only aggravate the causes of 
the fever and render it more surely and more 
speedily fatal, so any artificial distribution of 
wealth would aggravate the real causes of pov- 
erty and render them more fruitful of misery 
and suffering. Such methods would bring 
about a fatal stagnation of productive activity, 
they would immeasurably increase every form 
of extravagance, and stimulate speculation to 
a ruinous degree. 

As intelligent people we should repudiate all 
such ideas the moment they are uttered. They 



72 The Why of Poverty. 

are unphilosophical, impracticable, and, above 
all, unmanly. The free distribution of un- 
earned money, however the process might be 
disguised, would bring about a speedy reaction. 
It would involve the exchange of something for 
nothing, the expenditure of labor without a 
corresponding increase of production, the pay- 
ment of wages for which nothing is received 
in return. 

Not the mere scattering of money makes men 
rich; but the actual increase and general dis- 
tribution of the comforts and necessaries of life. 
Every hour of unproductive labor is so much 
total loss both to the individual and to the 
community. Hence only such expenditure as 
tends to increase the amount of production is 
really a blessing to mankind and a relief to 
poverty. He is not a public benefactor who 
scatters gold and silver broadcast without de- 
manding any adequate return. He is the true 
benefactor who, possessing wealth, spends it 
carefully and requires useful production in re- 
turn for every dollar. By so doing he increases 
the general store of wealth, while at the same 
time he furnishes employment to laborers, and 
thus preserves the natural and stable equilib- 
rium of society. 

The fortunes which have been amassed with 
least injury to the poor are the ripened fruit of 
economy and industry. Such fortunes make 
other fortunes as they grow. Their possessors 



The American Weakness. 73 

grow rich and in so doing enrich all who come 
in contact with them. On the other hand, the 
idle spendthrift impoverishes all about him, and 
his useless, reckless life is a curse alike to rich 
and poor. 

Probably there is no other country in the 
world where poverty is so frequently the result 
of extravagance as in America. The abun- 
dant resources of our land beget in us as a peo- 
ple the love of liberality, and a contempt for all 
limitations and economies. Our country is so 
large that we want everything on a large scale 
to correspond with it. We despise the day of 
small things. The very bountifulness of na- 
ture leads us to abuse that bounty. We think 
that the great store-houses are practically inex- 
haustible ; and when there comes a hint of limi- 
tation at some point, we are greaty surprised. 
This is not, however, the sober, final judgment 
of intelligent Americans. It is the impulsive 
outburst of startled thoughtlessness. When 
we stop to think, we know that anything short 
of the infinite may be exhausted, and that care- 
less waste cannot produce or preserve wealth. 

Demagogues may sound the praise of extrav- 
agance, calling it liberality or benevolence, 
and for the moment they may carry with them 
the tide of popular feeling; but it can be only 
for the moment. Popular intelligence quickly 
unmasks the sham, and the truth is revealed 
clear as the noon-day. Not extravagance but 



74 The Why of Poverty. 

economy on the part of all is the sure and effec- 
tive antidote for poverty. The Social Millen- 
nium is coming; but not immediately. And 
when it does come its watchword will be 
Economy. 



The Penalty of Ignorance. 75 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE PENALTY OF IGNORANCE. 

Nearly five millions of people over ten years 
of age who cannot read, and six millions who 
cannot write. This in enlightened America, 
according to official statistics. Most of these 
are to be found among the poorer classes of our 
population as a matter of course. Many of 
them are paupers. What else could we reason- 
ably expect? The parents who allow their 
child to neglect his school privileges on any 
pretence whatsoever are doing their utmost to 
fit him for a position in the poor-house. 

An investigation which was made a few years 
ago in the alms-houses of New York revealed 
the fact that narly one-third of the occupants 
could neither read nor write, and only thirty 
per cent, had received a fair common-school 
education. And the New York alms-houses 
are not peculiar in this respect. Any one who 
is at all familiar with the facts knows that the 
same figures would fairly represent the propor- 
tions among the paupers of any state in the 
Union. 

These statistics indicate very clearly the nat- 



76 The Why of Poverty. 

ural connection between ignorance, in the sense 
of illiteracy, and poverty. The two go hand 
in hand. The sequence of cause and effect is 
too clear to admit of doubt. Says Dr. Behrends, 
a most careful and scholarly writer on social 
questions, " Illiteracy, intemperance, over- 
crowding, and the looseness of the marriage 
tie, — these are the four social causes of pauper- 
ism; personal vices in their inception, but 
grown to their present alarming proportions by 
public indifference and complicity ; and so- 
ciety must throttle them, or perish under their 
growing fangs." 

This phase of the subject requires neither 
argument nor elaboration in these pages. It 
has been fully treated by others. Authorita- 
tive statistics have been gathered and published 
to the world. The facts are self-evident, and 
the remedy for the evil is not less so. Only 
the general diffusion of ordinary learning can 
counteract the danger growing out of illiteracy ; 
and our public schools wisely sustained are 
gradually accomplishing this work. With 
pardonable pride we boast of our public schools 
and rely upon them as a source of national 
strength and safety. It is not enough however 
that such schools exist, not enough that they 
are of a high order, well supplied with teachers 
and apparatus. Their influence must be 
brought to bear upon every child. Education 
must be compulsory not merely in name but 



The Penalty of Ignorance. 77 

in reality. Popular opinion must strongly sus- 
tain the enforcement of truant laws in every 
community. Well would it be if a strict edu- 
cational test of suffrage could be applied. It 
would drive the worst elements from our poli- 
tics. It would curtail the power of dema- 
gogues, and political tricksters and wire-pull- 
ers would lose their control over many of our 
cities and large towns where now they reign 
triumphant. It would give to the ballot a 
higher significance and value than it possesses 
under the present system. Universal suffrage 
is a grand ideal when it is accompanied by uni- 
versal intelligence; but power in the hands of 
the ignorant is always a source of danger to 
society. 

There are, however, other forms of ignor- 
ance besides illiteracy that bear with equal di- 
rectness and force upon the question of poverty. 
Learned ignorance is no less disastrous than 
unlearned ignorance, nor is it less common. A 
great deal of practical ignorance may be 
found among the graduates of our grammar 
and high schools; yes, even among our uni- 
versity graduates. The degree of Ph. D., 
D. D., or LL. D., is no guarantee of practi- 
cal knowledge or sound common sense. A 
knowledge of Latin and Greek, of Astronomy 
or Mathematics, is not all that is necessary to 
enable a person to work successfully or profit- 
ably. In fact a man may be familiar with a 



78 The Why of Poverty. 

dozen language and as many sciences, and yet 
be unable to earn a decent living for himself 
and his family. With all his learning he may be 
as ignorant as a babe in arms of all useful arts 
and occupations. And, again, one may receive 
a large income and live in poverty the while 
because he is ignorant of the art of spending 
money. 

And the art of spending is no less essential to 
comfort and wealth than the art of earning. 
Not many years ago a professor of Mathe- 
matics in one of our leading colleges became 
suddenly bankrupt, and was found to be so 
seriously involved that he was dismissed from 
his position in the college. What was the 
trouble ? He had received a salary ample for 
the needs of his family. As a mathematician 
he held a high rank and was known throughout 
the country. But in matters of business he was 
deplorably ignorant. He did not know how to 
save money or how to spend it profitably. He 
was poor on a salary that should have sup- 
plied every need and left a good margin for 
old age. More than one Doctor of Divinity 
receiving a large salary in the prominent pul- 
pits of our land is obliged to have his debts 
liquidated at frequent intervals by some 
wealthy and kind-hearted parishioner, because 
of his culpable ignorance of business affairs and 
his neglect properly to regulate the relation be- 
tween income and outgo. 



The Penalty of Ignorance. 79 

To be ignorant of the art of earning money 
is an evil. To be ignorant of the art of spend- 
ing is also an evil. But when the two forms 
of ignorance meet in one individual, the case is 
a sad one indeed. If a laborer from want of 
skill is able to earn but small wages, and then 
does not know how to use his limited means 
advantageously so as to procure the greatest 
possible return for his outlay, he is doubly poor. 
And poverty of this sort is by no means in- 
frequent. Read the many tales of suffering 
and want in our great cities, and in the ma- 
jority of cases ignorance w T ill reveal itself at 
every turn as the one chief source of misery. 
The wages of many a toiler are small, pitifully 
small, we must confess. Often they are no 
adequate return for the work done. Yet, small 
as they are, if wisely and economically ex- 
pended, they would purchase many comforts, 
Instead of this, however, they are frittered 
away on useless luxuries, unwholesome food, 
showy but useless adornment, until nothing 
is left for the necessaries of life. A knowl- 
edge of the relative value of the different kinds 
of food and clothing, a little skill in using rem- 
nants, would be to many of these sufferers an 
unspeakable blessing. It would add far more 
to their real w r ealth than a hundred per cent, 
increase in w T ages. 

Attempts have been made by some of the 
more kindly disposed and far-seeing employers 



8o The Why of Poverty. 

to improve the condition of those who work 
for them by providing wholesome diet and 
regulating the conditions of labor. But it not 
seldom happens that these well-meant and 
wisely directed efforts arouse strong opposi- 
tion on the part of the working men and 
women whom they are designed to benefit. In 
many cases they have been abandoned on this 
account. Ignorance is conservative and suspi- 
cious. It does not look with favor on new 
ideas. It has blocked the pathway of every 
useful and labor-saving invention. Every 
movement, even of the purest philanthropy 
and benevolence, has encountered in this the 
most serious of all obstacles. Ignorance is 
ever ready to question and suspect all plans 
suggested by employers. It creates a fancied 
antagonism of interests, and lives in a constant 
state of imaginary warfare, always on the 
lookout for tricks and strategy, but never 
ready to accept friendly overtures in good 
faith. 

The obstinacy of ignorance, and the blind- 
ness with which it will oppose the best designs, 
are really marvelous. Mrs. Campbell, in her 
Prisoners of Poverty, tells of a small manu- 
facturer in New York who endeavored to bet- 
ter the condition of his operatives, and how 
his plans were frustrated by their ignorant op- 
position and foolish suspicions. First, he 
tried to improve the sanitary condition of his 



The Penalty of Ignorance. 81 

work-rooms in the matter of ventilation. To 
the women and girls, however, pure air meant 
only cold air, and every window left open they 
carefully and tightly closed. It was only when 
he so arranged his ventilators that the girls 
could not reach them that they would allow 
themselves the blessing of fresh air. Then he 
provided good coffee, soup, and bread, to take 
the place of the pies, cakes, and confectionery 
that most of them were in the habit of eating. 
These he sold at cost, so that while they were 
more wholesome and strengthening they were 
also cheaper than the sweetmeats. But the 
girls only laughed at him and abused his kind- 
ness to such a degree that he was at length 
compelled to forego his efforts in this direc- 
tion. Finally he endeavored to instruct his 
employees and offered them a system of co- 
operation; but all in vain. In every thing 
they saw not a plan for their good, but some 
scheme for the employer's profit. At every 
turn they imagined that he was trying to take 
advantage of their helplessness and to deprive 
them of a portion of the wages they had fairly 
earned. Thus their ignorance and unreason- 
ing prejudice defeated an honest attempt to 
improve the condition of the persons employed 
by that firm. 

Is it strange that employers are slow to 
adopt new methods and are sometimes in- 
different to the comfort and welfare of those 
6 



82 The Why of Poverty. 

under them, when the most unquestionable 
kindness and friendly intent is met with sus- 
picion and rebuff? The selfishness and 
wrong-doing are not all on the side of em- 
ployers in this matter. Many workmen are 
themselves chiefly to blame for the ills they 
suffer. 

The one story might be repeated many times 
with but slight changes of detail; for such 
cases are by no means rare. Any one who 
will interest himself in the subject may find 
similar instances by the score in which poverty 
and its consequences would be removed or at 
least very greatly alleviated if the poor would 
only receive without prejudice the suggestions 
of those who are better informed than them- 
selves. Untold suffering might be averted if 
persons of very limited means knew the differ- 
ence between wholesome and unwholesome 
food, between showy and durable or comfortable 
clothing, and between good and bad air. The 
best is often the cheapest even in the first out- 
lay; and it is always so in the end. Pure air, 
comfortable clothing and wholesome food are 
the indispensable requisites for sound health; 
and poverty rests lightly on the shoulders of 
a strong and healthy man. Want is the nat- 
ural child of disease, and it is frequently per- 
petuated by utter ignorance and neglect of the 
laws of hygiene. 

Poverty does not consist in the mere lack of 



The Penalty of Ignorance. 83 

money. It signifies rather the inability to 
satisfy personal needs. One can get along 
very well without money, if he have sufficient 
food and clothing and other comforts. The 
person who earns twenty dollars per week, but 
is unable to satisfy his needs therewith, to 
provide himself with palatable and nourishing 
food and to obtain clothing which shall pro- 
tect him from the stress of the weather, is 
poorer than his neighbor who, with only five 
dollars a week, is able to procure these things. 

And it is just at this point that ignorance 
affects the problem of poverty. Men and 
women do not know how to use their money 
so that their real w T ants shall be supplied. 
They buy expensive food that does not nourish 
them. They starve even while they eat. Or 
they purchase clothing that has a stylish ap- 
pearance; but they know nothing of its quality, 
and it quickly wears out. They waste money 
for expensive amusements that do not afford 
true rest or recreation, or they squander it 
upon useless articles, and then wonder why 
they are so poor. The real wonder is that 
they make out to live at all. 

To cure this poverty-breeding ignorance we 
need education at once more universal and 
more practical. Our boys and girls must not 
devote their years of study wholly to acquiring 
accomplishments. They must learn those 
things which will enable them to cope with the 



84 The Why of Poverty. 

problems of daily life. We have not a word 
to say against the higher branches of learn- 
ing, so called. They have their place. But 
they should not usurp the place that belongs 
of right to something else. The man who has 
spent his life delving in Latin or Hebrew or 
Sanskrit, and does not know how to handle 
a saw and hammer, or cannot tell the differ- 
ence between shoddy and durable cloth is a 
fit candidate for the poor-house. The young 
man who, after spending seven or eight years 
at the highest institutions of learning, looks 
upon a cash account as an unfathomable mys- 
tery, is lamentably ignorant in spite of his 
learning. The same may be said of the 
woman who can play the piano and sing di- 
vinely, or talk fluently in French or German, 
but who knows nothing of the science of house r 
keeping and can neither bake a respectable loaf 
of bread nor choose a profitable cut of beef. 

Children should be taught how to spend 
money, as well as how to earn it. The two 
arts are of equal importance. They must be 
taught the practical matters of daily life, the 
necessities of our human nature. Hygiene and 
household economy must not be neglected for 
more trifling matters. They must study the 
construction of the human body, what are its 
requirements, and how these may be most 
easily and perfectly satisfied. They must learn 
the comparative value of different articles of 



The Penalty of Ignorance. 85 

food and clothing. These and many similar 
matters should be considered of first impor- 
tance in our public school education. After 
they are thoroughly learned, as much else may 
be added as the taste and means of the indi- 
vidual warrant. In the school of the future 
Domestic Economy must have a more honor- 
able place than the Classics, and the art of 
Book-keeping than the Analytical Calculus. 
As our people become more generally educated 
along these practical lines, we shall in a cor- 
responding degree overcome that form of ig- 
norance which is a most fruitful source of 
poverty. 



86 The Why of Poverty. 



CHAPTER VII. 

BABELISM. 

The story of Babel is familiar. The oldest 
of economic writers has told us in a some- 
what legendary fashion how mankind at a very 
early period determined to live together in 
one vast city with a conspicuous central tower, 
which might serve as a guide to any wanderer 
to bring him home again. He also records 
how this plan was defeated as utterly sub- 
versive of the best interests of the race. Elim- 
inating all merely traditional or supernatural 
elements, the story is marvelously true to life, 
and is an economic parable that will bear 
close study to-day. 

Every student of social questions must ob- 
serve with anxiety the rapid growth of large 
cities in our land. Men and women from all 
parts of the country crowd together into Bos- 
ton, New York, Chicago, and other chosen 
centers at a rate wholly unknown in other 
countries. London and Paris are the growth 
of many centuries, while New York has ex- 
isted less than two centuries, and Chicago has 



Babelism. 87 

just passed her first half century. Yet these 
latter cities already present many of the diffi- 
culties that are found in those across the sea, 
and in some points they are even worse. 

New York surpasses London in illustrations 
of the possible density of population. In one 
ward the rate is 203,000 souls to the square 
mile; in another, 208,000; in another, 243,- 
000; and in one section the population is 
crowded in at the rate of 370,000 persons to 
the square mile. 

The worst phase of city life is found in the 
tenement houses, where whole families are 
crowded together in single rooms, and the 
most ordinary decency is impossible. Think 
of nine persons sleeping, eating, and prepar- 
ing food in a room eight feet by twelve and 
scarcely high enough to allow its occupants to 
stand erect. Imagine the conditions of life 
where fourteen persons of both sexes and 
of ages varying from nine years to adult man- 
hood and womanhood herd together in a cellar 
without divisions or partitions of any kind. 
Hundreds of people are found living in tene- 
ment houses with an average of six persons 
to a room. 

What results must w r e expect as inevitable, 
both moral and physical, from such indecent 
and unhealthy overcrowding? Can we wonder 
that ninety per cent, of the children born in 
such quarters die at a very early age? Is it 



88 The Why of Poverty. 

surprising that such as survive and come to 
maturity so often give themselves to lives of 
sin and crime? Not at all. It could not in 
the nature of things be otherwise. Healthy 
bodies and pure minds cannot long exist in 
an atmosphere so foul and amid surroundings 
so brutalizing. This overcrowded tenement 
house life is one of the most serious obstacles 
to social progress and to moral reform; for 
its tendency is to debase men in every way, 
and to propagate disease and crime. Poverty 
is serious enough under the best of circum- 
stances; but its harmful power and its hope- 
lessness are incalculably increased when it 
brings men into such surroundings that they 
lose their true manhood and become mere ani- 
mals. Then poverty tends to perpetuate itself 
with all its attendant evils. To mere material 
want are added moral, intellectual and spirit- 
ual poverty. It is therefore no overdrawn 
figure of speech to call our cities " plague spots 
on the surface of our modern society. ,, 

This evil of Babelism, or the centralizing of 
population in cities, is rapidly increasing. One 
hundred years ago, but little more than three 
per cent, of our population lived in cities of 
eight thousand or more inhabitants. Now 
nearly twenty-five per cent, is gathered in such 
cities. Since the opening of the present cen- 
tury the number of these cities has increased 
from six to nearly two hundred and ninety. 



Babelism. 89 

And the process of centralization goes on with 
constantly increasing rapidity. 

Almost every form of danger that threatens 
American society and that complicates the 
problem of labor and poverty is found en- 
trenched most strongly in the city. The city 
is the center of anarchism, of crime, of poverty 
and of intemperance. Riots and destructive 
strikes are almost wholly confined to the cities. 
Every radical movement has its birth and finds 
its most vigorous support in the cities. The 
worst elements of society, the criminals, the 
idlers, the lawless, crowd to the cities, be- 
cause in the bustle and crowd of city life they 
may the more easily escape from the public 
gaze, and may carry on their unlawful work 
with greater success and safety. These classes 
are ever ready to participate in disorder and 
riot and to urge on all disturbances that will 
afford them better facilities for plunder. Iji 
our country villages and smaller towns there 
is little discontent, little unrest, little danger; 
for it is there that we find the greatest propor- 
tion of intelligence and the most strongly de- 
veloped characer. The rural districts contain 
the conservative and the conserving elements 
of our population. 

Again, it is in our large cities that we find 
the most glaring inequality of condition. 
There social lines are most distinctly drawn 
There is poverty the most intense, and there is 



96 The Why of Poverty. 

greatest wealth and luxury. Millionaires 
flourish best in the golden soil of the city ; and 
only the hardening influences of city life and 
the busy struggle for wealth can grind men 
down to the bitterest poverty. 

With all the forces of evil doubly active in 
the city, we find the proportion of counteract- 
ing forces very much smaller than in the 
country. There are about four times as many 
churches in proportion to the population in the 
country as in the city ; and the influence of the 
Christian church is of necessity less far reach- 
ing in the more thickly populated communities. 
The life of the city is more selfish and less 
sympathetic than is country life. Men know 
little, and often care less, about the condition 
and needs of their neighbors ; and when Chris- 
tian workers really desire to seek out needy 
ones, it requires much persistent effort to dis- 
cover the real condition of the great mass of 
the people. It is easy for persons who are 
so disposed to avoid notice in the crowded city, 
so that the Christian church fails to reach 
many notwithstanding her mbst untiring 
watchfulness in this respect. 

There is none of the intense suffering and 
poverty and little of the temptation in the 
country villages that are so familiar to many 
of the inhabitants of every great city. Yet 
thousands of the young men and women of our 
hill towns are ambitious to see city life; and 



Babelism. 



9i 



they leave happiness and comfort and respect- 
ability behind very often, and seek the excite- 
ment of the city, for which sight not a few 
pay the price of poverty and suffering. City 
life looks wonderfully attractive at a distance; 
but the nearer view is often a disillusion. It 
would be very well if every restless young per- 
son plodding safely and comfortably along in 
the country, could read two books that tell the 
story of city life as no fiction could do. I 
refer to The Bitter Cry of Ovitcast London, 
and Mrs. Campbell's Prisoners of Poverty. 
The former tells the story of the real inner 
life of many London toilers; and the latter 
portrays a few of the trials of the poor work- 
ing girls in New York. A glimpse at these 
stern realities might serve to dispel in some 
measure the illusions that prevail regarding 
the delights of city life. It might exert some 
slight influence in counteracting the fatal 
tendency towards centralization. 

At the present time many earnest men and 
women are studying the problems of city life, 
the tenement houses, the sweating establish- 
ments, and similar evils, in the hope of bring- 
ing relief to the sufferers. Dishonest and op- 
pressive methods are being exposed; unright- 
eous practises are being denounced, and better 
plans and conditions suggested. But all these 
things fall far short of meeting the difficulty. 
The evil lies not in any individual or in any 



92 The Why of Poverty. 

method. It lies in the city itself and in the 
tendency of men and women to come together 
in unduly large numbers. 

The earth is the sole reservoir of human 
wealth. Our riches are derived from the 
farms, the plantations, the ranches, the forests, 
the mines, and the fisheries. Not a dollar 
comes from any other source. The wealth 
actually created in all our cities combined is 
insignificant. They are merely centers of dis- 
tribution. The country, the country is the 
source of all wealth. The nation grows rich 
according to the measure in which we develop 
the resources of the earth. The people will 
be comfortable when a sufficient number are 
employed in this work of creating wealth from 
the natural sources. Of course we need a 
certain number of indirect producers. We 
need men and women to manufacture the raw 
material, to transport productions from one 
part of the country to another, to carry on the 
necessary lines of exchange ; but these should be 
as few as possible. It is a self-evident propo- 
sition that we need many more producers than 
distributors. The great majority of our peo- 
ple ought to be engaged in direct production 
of some sort. But are they? The fact that 
twenty-five per cent, of our population is col- 
lected in cities implies that at least one person 
in every four is merely a distributor. It really 
implies much more than this. For while every 



Babelism. 93 

dweller in the city is a distributor in some 
sort, not every dweller in the country is a di- 
rect producer. The smallest village must have 
its traders and manufacturers and professional 
men of various kinds. When all these are 
taken into the account we have reduced the 
number of direct producers to an alarming ex- 
tent. 

The gravitation towards the cities means a 
constant diminishing of direct production, and 
a constant increase of distribution. No very 
keen insight is required to foresee the inevi- 
table result. When for any reason the pro- 
duction falls short, or the wheels of commerce 
are blocked, or at any point the number of in- 
direct producers passes the limit of forbearance, 
then comes poverty; and those non-producers 
who are farthest from the sources of supply, 
in other words the city-dwellers, are driven 
to the point of starvation. There is no such 
thing as abject poverty and starvation in the 
country because people there are in direct con- 
tact with the great reservoir of wealth, and in 
the hardest times they will be able to secure 
enough to save them from actual suffering. 

It is said that by a very reasonable estimate 
the agricultural resources of America are ca- 
pable of feeding one billion people. And that 
with our other resources they may not only be 
sustained but enriched. To accomplish this, 
however, the resources must be developed. 



94 The Why of Poverty. 

We must be a nation of farmers and miners 
and herdsmen and the like rather than a nation 
of shopkeepers and speculators. We must put 
a premium upon country life, and endeavor to 
make it as attractive as city life, that our young 
men may be held to the soil, instead of seeking 
the counting-house and the yard-stick. 

The social system of the ancient Hebrew 
nation was a model of economic wisdom. 
Every family had an inheritance of land which 
could not be permanently alienated. And 
thus each individual had some direct interest 
in agrarian pursuits, and the collecting of the 
people into a few large cities was impossible. 

Our own social system is totally different, 
and we cannot say that it is in all respects 
better. In common with many other peoples 
we discriminate against the producing classes 
and put a premium on non-production. The 
farmer is handicapped in the race for wealth, 
and feels that he could enjoy many more com- 
forts and luxuries if he were a trader. The 
artisan cannot hope to vie with the speculator 
in the matter of acquisition. The most insig- 
nificant dry-goods clerk in the metropolis en- 
joys privileges for which his unspeakably more 
useful country brother longs in vain. Thus 
has grown up the strong tide of population set- 
ting towards the city. 

Before the problem of poverty is solved this 
tendency must be counteracted. So long as 
the centralizing of population and the process 



Babelism. 95 

of crowding continues the most untiring ef- 
forts of scholars and philanthropists will be in- 
sufficient to cope with the resulting evils. 
When the supply of workers far exceeds the 
demand no human power can prevent ruinous 
competition nor save the workers from pov- 
erty. It is not enough, therefore, that we 
organize societies and frame laws to protect 
these workers from injustice, that we teach 
them economy, that we seek to improve their 
condition. All these things will be powerless 
to relieve poverty, so long as the ultimate cause 
exists. We must go deeper. We must strike 
at the root of the matter, and prevent the 
crowding before we can hope to obviate its re- 
sults. 

It may be that the doctrines of Mr. Henry 
George would find a practical interpretation in 
this light. The tariff question too might as- 
sume a different aspect if viewed from this 
standpoint. But whatever be the means, this 
should be the end of our striving, — to reduce 
to the minimum this centralizing force, and to 
scatter our population in the villages. Every 
movement that stops short of this must be 
partial and ineffective. The city threatens the 
safety of our government, the stability of our 
social institutions, the comfort and happiness 
of our people. Before the danger can be met 
and the evils removed the American people 
must thoroughly learn the lesson of the Tower 
of Babel. 



96 The Why of Poverty. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

AVERSION TO MANUAL LABOR. 

"Whoever does not teach his son a trade, 
teaches him to steal/' said Rabbi Hillel.. The 
proverb is just as true for Americans as for 
Hebrews. For proof consult the pauper and 
criminal statistics of our land. Of our pau- 
pers, nearly sixty per cent, never had any 
training in manual labor. And more than 
eighty-five per cent, of our criminals are per- 
sons who have not received an industrial edu- 
cation. The prison records of one state reveal 
the fact that but little over five per cent, of 
the entire number of prisoners had learned a 
trade. It is a significant fact that nearly one 
half of the criminals of the country are chil- 
dren of mechanics who neglected to teach their 
sons a trade. 

Says Dr. Behrends: "Of the 1,759 inmates 
of the Elmira Reformatory only 18 8-10 per 
cent, had ever been engaged in mechanical 
work, while 78 4-10 per cent, had been com- 
mon laborers, servants, and clerks, though the 
ancestral history revealed the fact that 41 6-10 



Aversion to Manual Labor. 97 

per cent, had come from the homes of me- 
chanics. The disclosures of the Philadelphia 
prison tables are even more startling. Of the 
2,127 inmates, 1,939 were found never to have 
been apprenticed ; 75 were apprenticed, but left 
before their terms of service had expired, and 
only 113 had learned a trade, — a little more 
than five per cent, of the entire number. . . . 
The ranks of crime are mainly recruited from 
those who never had a mechanical training. 
.... Our penitentiaries second the admon- 
ition that comes from the alms-houses, — intro- 
duce manual training into the public schools 
even at the sacrifice of grammar and cube 
root." 

Among the Jews work was esteemed hon- 
orable, and the rich and poor, the learned and 
the unlearned, all recognized the worth and 
respectability of manual labor. Each man 
learned some form of handicraft, even though 
it did not appear that he would ever need to 
exercise it. The apostle Paul was a tent 
maker. The rabbi Hillel was a woodcutter. 
Shammai was a carpenter. The highest men 
in the nation were smiths, masons, tailors, and 
handworkers of some sort. It is a fact of no 
slight significance that Jesus Christ was a 
carpenter, and that He chose as apostles and 
founders of His Church fishermen and other 
manual laborers. 

With us all is different. The American 



98 The Why of Poverty. 

ideal of nobility is to live as nearly as pos- 
sible without work. Trades are despised, and 
manual labor is considered to be degrading. 
Every mechanic longs to bring up his boys in 
a life different from his own. He tries to find 
for them some occupation that will not soil the 
hands or harden the muscles. In accordance 
too often with parental advice the farm is de- 
serted for the dry-goods counter, and the ma- 
chine shop or the factory for the office. It is 
not otherwise with the girls. The marks of 
a fashionable lady are white, soft hands, a few 
so-called accomplishments, and an utter ignor- 
ance of all practical matters. For a woman 
to perform manual labor is to lose caste in so- 
ciety; and not a few prefer to live dishonestly 
or even immorally, rather than to earn their 
bread by honest toil. Everywhere the ideal is 
a life of ease, and even those who do work for 
a living constantly look forward to a time 
when toil may be laid aside and life " enjoyed." 
Undeniably true are these words of Mrs. 
Campbell : " Year by year in the story of the 
Republic, labor has taken lower and lower 
place. The passion for getting on, latent in 
every drop of American blood, has made 
money the sole symbol of success, and freedom 
from hand-labor the synonym of happiness. . . 
It is the story of every civilized nation before 
its fall, — this exploitation of labor, this deg- 
radation of the worker ; and the story of hope- 



Aversion to Manual Labor. 99 

less decay and collapse must be ours also, if 
different ideals do not arise. . . . There is not 
a girl old enough to work at all who does 
not dream of a possible future in which work 
will cease and ease and luxury take its place. 
The boy content with a trade, the man or 
woman accepting simple living and its limita- 
tions contentedly, is counted a fool. . . . La- 
bor is curse ; never the blessing that it may bear 
when accepted as man's chief good, and used 
as developing, not as destroying power." 

In this common aversion to manual labor we 
may discover one of the principal causes of the 
rush to the city. Country life means for most 
persons manual labor. It means farming, or 
mining, or fishing, or other form of hand 
work. The city opens many avenues of gen- 
tility. The young man goes to the city that he 
may escape from the farm to the shop or the 
counting-house. The young women, that she 
may exchange housework for the more pleas- 
ing duties of the " sales-lady," the type-writer, 
or the cashier. There is a good living for as 
many as are really needed in these places ; but 
when they become overcrowded some must 
starve. Production implies manual labor for 
the majority. To despise manual labor is to 
lessen the aggregate of production, and to in- 
crease the number of those who consume with- 
out producing. 

Again, the aversion to manual labor gives 

L.cf ^- 



ioo The Why of Poverty. 

rise to much of the speculation that curses our 
society and commerce. Speculation does not 
soil the hands, therefore it is considered gen- 
teel. That it defiles the heart and sears the 
conscience is to most men of little moment, 
since the average man looketh on the outward 
appearance only. The regular course of evo- 
lution is through speculation to pauperism or 
crime. 

Manual labor is often contrasted with brain 
work, and the latter is considered much more 
noble and worthy of the highest manhood. 
There is no doubt that the brain worker is a 
nobler man than the laborer who works like a 
mere machine, without a thought or care for 
anything beyond his work and daily food. 
But the manual laborer is not of necessity a 
stupid, soulless animal ; nor, on the other hand, 
is it proof positive of intelligence or brain 
power to abstain from hand work. They are 
the truest brain workers who see most clearly 
what needs to be done in the world and then 
do it in the best possible manner. Without 
manual labor life and progress would be im- 
possible; everybody would die of starvation. 
Our food, our clothing, our homes, in short, 
all the comforts and necessities of life, are the 
product of manual labor. The greatest bene- 
factors of the race have been in the ranks of 
the manual laborers. What man that has lived 
by his wits alone has done so much for the 



Aversion to Manual Labor. 101 

world as did Arkwright or Stephenson or 
Elias Howe? Franklin the philosopher is no 
more worthy of respect than Franklin the prin- 
ter; nor did the great man ever blush at the 
memory of the humble service of his youth, 
even in the midst of his most important diplo- 
matic engagements. 

It is in the union of brain work and manual 
labor that the best results are achieved. Not 
studied idleness, but intelligent labor is the true 
ideal of noble manhood and womanhood. We 
degrade toil when we divorce it from intelli- 
gence, and make the worker a mere machine. 
When we prefer to employ the ignorant and 
stupid because we can get their service cheaper 
or because we can treat them with less defer- 
ence, we are putting a premium on stupidity, 
and helping to drive intelligent and self-re- 
specting persons from the ranks of service. 
We exalt labor when we demand that it shall 
be united with intelligence, and when we treat 
skilled labor with the respect that it merits. 

One cause of the popular aversion to manual 
labor reveals itself in the inconsistency of many 
of our most intelligent and well meaning 
writers upon the subject. Much has been said 
in a poetic fashion about the " dignity of 
labor ;" but when men write in plain prose, they 
most frequently demean labor. How often, 
for example, do we observe that writers who 
insist most earnestly upon the true nobility of 



102 The Why of Poverty. 

service exhort the laborer to diligence and 
faithfulness in his work in order that he may 
rise above work and become a master instead 
of a servant. To extol the dignity of labor 
and in the same breath to represent an escape 
from labor as the great object of life is, to say 
the least, very inconsistent. This inconsist- 
ency bears its natural fruit in the popular views 
of life and labor. The man who sings the 
praises of toil while he avoids toil by every 
possible means should not expect to win many 
converts to his preaching. 

He only shows a true appreciation of the 
nobility of labor who endeavors to improve his 
own condition and that of his fellow-men as 
laborers, and to remain a laborer as long as he 
lives. It should be the aim of every social 
economist to exalt laborers as laborers, not to 
elevate them above labor. This is the true 
Christian ideal, to insist that all men should be 
laborers, that service is the only measure of 
manly worth, and that whoever ceases to serve 
has taken a step downward. Not the servant, 
but the idler, should be stigmatized. Men 
should by all means strive to rise, but to rise 
in service and by means of service. The meas- 
ure of elevation should be gauged by the 
quantity and quality of work done; not by the 
degree of release from work. As the effort 
of the servant who had faithfully discharged 
his duty in the matter of five talents was re- 



Aversion to Manual Labor. 103 

warded by the much greater duty of caring for 
five cities, so the true reward of all service is 
more service. 

The position of a master or the responsi- 
bilities of leadership should be desired only as 
they afford opportunities for a larger sphere of 
work and an increased power to give one's en- 
ergies for the highest good of society. As 
contrasted with this real growth in working 
power, all false ideas of personal advancement, 
all dignities that are based on external appear- 
ance, all empty titles by which rank is made 
superior to true manhood, should be accounted 
of little value. 

A good illustration of the true spirit of re- 
spect for labor is seen in the life of Samuel 
Morley the English philanthropist. He was a 
man of humble birth and limited opportunities ; 
but by his industry and earnest labor he ac- 
cumulated a large fortune and attained to an 
influential position in society and the nation. 
When he had won success, he was offered a 
peerage by the government; but he proudly 
refused the honor, declaring that he was born 
of the common people, and he would die with 
the common people. In refinement, culture, 
and influence, he was the noblest of peers. 
For the empty title and artificial social posi- 
tion he cared nothing. Would that the same 
spirit might animate every worker in our own 
land. 



104 The Why of Poverty. 

As a people loving manly independence and 
strength of character, we should strenuously 
resist the encroachments of dilettanteism upon 
our manhood and womanhood. The aversion 
to manual labor is an indication of moral weak- 
ness. It argues the existence of false aims and 
a perverted ambition. The sturdy virtue of 
our fathers that conquered the wilderness and 
made a highway for civilization through the 
trackless forests is giving place to a namby- 
pamby sentiment which is destructive to our 
national character. The world has suffered 
much from aristocracies of various kinds, — 
aristocracies of blood, aristocracies of power, 
aristocracies of wealth; but there is an aris- 
tocracy worse than all these. May the Lord 
deliver us from an aristocracy of idleness. 



The Tax on Barbarism. 105 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE TAX ON BARBARISM. 

To speak of War as an appreciable cause of 
poverty in America to-day may seem absurd to 
many minds. Of course a war within our own 
borders is expensive, and drains the national 
resources for the time; but even that has its 
compensations in after years of quickened 
trade, — is the common notion. Not a few of 
our commercial men and large speculators look 
with undisguised satisfaction and hope on 
every war cloud that arises across the sea or in 
South America. They fancy that such a com- 
motion w r ill be a real blessing to our commerce 
and a stimulus to our industries. Whatever 
may be its effect upon the nations or individ- 
uals immediately engaged, they imagine that 
we who supply munitions of war shall reap a 
rich harvest of wealth, which shall for the 
most part find its way into the pockets of the 
manual laborers. For this reason the spirit 
and practise of war find no slight encourage- 
ment in the popular opinions of the day. They 
are stimulated by the public press, and kept 



106 The Why of Poverty. 

alive by the support of government as an es- 
sential element of national life. 

Now all such ideas, however widely they 
may prevail, are wholly out of keeping with the 
progress of the age in which we live. It is 
time they were exploded. War is no more es- 
sential to the maintenance of national honor 
than is dueling to the preservation of individ- 
ual honor. In any of its forms war is a relic 
of barbarism which still clings to the skirts of 
our Nineteenth Century enlightenment, and is 
very hard to shake off. It is the most ex- 
pensive relic of antiquity that we cherish, and 
is not worth the price paid. Whether waged 
within our own boundaries or in some remote 
quarter of the globe, by our citizens or by the 
people of other lands, it consumes the wealth 
of mankind and impoverishes the world. We 
speak of "compensations" but there are no 
compensations, nothing but total, utter, irre- 
trievable loss ; wealth destroyed, industry ham- 
pered, society unhinged. So long as we per- 
mit this remnant of barbarism to exist we must 
pay a heavy tax for its maintenance, and that 
tax like all others will fall most heavily upon 
the poor. 

Take a few figures. The late Civil War 
cost this nation the immense sum of $6,189,- 
929,908, to which must be added the Southern 
debt of $2,000,000,000. This was the imme- 
diate outlay, — over eight billion dollars. Be- 



The Tax on Barbarism. 107 

sides this we pay annually in pensions and in- 
terest over $150,000,000, taken directly from 
our national treasury. The figures startle us 
even though we can form but a very indefinite 
idea of their meaning. They tell, however, 
only a small part of the story. No figures 
can ever express the weight of terrible burdens 
which that war has laid upon the shoulders of 
our people. Think of the precious lives wasted, 
of the thousands of strong toilers taken away 
from their work never to return. Think of 
the waste of labor, the energy put forth that 
brought no return. Think of the waste of the 
precious results of many years of labor. These 
can never be calculated, for they are beyond 
computation. 

Yet even these are not all the wastes to be 
traced to this one source. Military life very 
often unfits men for the ordinary pursuits of 
peace, and for the steady fulfilment of civil 
and social duties. Vice ever follows in the 
train of war. A generation has passed since 
the war swept over our land, but its scars of 
sin are yet unhealed. Our newspapers are 
filled with stories of murders, of suicides, of 
lawless outbreaks, of bold robberies ; our newer 
settlements are the frequent scenes of violence 
and crime. Many of these are but the echoes 
of the war. A vast army of tramps wander 
from village to village in every state, lazy and 
lawless. Great accessions have been made to 



108 The Why of Poverty. 

the ranks of pauperism. For many of these 
evils we find one common cause, the war.- 
Slowly the traces of war are disappearing, but 
it will be many years before we shall be wholly 
freed from them. Whoever imagines that 
what was at the time so fearful a calamity has 
already been transformed into a blessing is 
greatly mistaken. With passing years the 
burdens which it brought will grow lighter, 
but they w T ill never be changed into wings. 

If we could trace the history of every case 
of poverty that exists in our land at the pres- 
ent time, very often we should be led directly 
to the Civil War. We should learn how the 
father or the brother, the strong bread-winner 
of the family, went away at his country's call 
to see his home no more, or to return sick or 
maimed, a constant burden upon the weaker 
ones. We should be told of business ham- 
pered, and of failure brought on by the un- 
natural condition of the country. We should 
hear of suffering caused by financial panics, the 
direct outgrowth of the war. The story is a 
common one, and familiar to the greater por- 
tion of the American people. Scarcely a 
hamlet in our land in which we cannot find at 
least one home where poverty reigns as a direct 
result of the war. Of course the pension sys- 
tem has afforded relief in very many cases; 
but not a few needy and deserving ones have 



The Tax on Barbarism. 109 

waited long and patiently for the relief that 
never came. 

Armless sleeves, wooden legs, and broken 
constitutions are, however, among the least 
disastrous result of the war. Other conse- 
quences have followed, which, from an eco- 
nomic point of view, are immeasurably more 
harmful. Says Mr. Adams in his Chapters 
of Erie " The Civil War in America, with 
its enormous issues of depreciating currency, 
and its reckless waste of money and credit by 
the government, created a speculative mania 
such as the United States, with all its expe- 
rience in this respect, had never before known. 
Not only in Broad Street, the center of New 
York speculation, but far and wide through- 
out the Northern States, almost every man 
who had money at all employed a part of his 
capital in the purchase of stocks or of gold, 
of copper, of petroleum, or of domestic pro- 
duce, in the hope of a rise in prices, or staked 
money in the expectation of a fall. To use 
the jargon of the street, every farmer and 
every shop-keeper in the country seemed to be 
engaged in ' carrying ' some favorite security 
on a ' margin.' ' The outcome of this arti- 
ficial trade and its ruinous effects upon all 
legitimate industry and commerce we need not 
discuss here. At present it will suffice to call 
attention to the fact of the relation between 



no The Why of Poverty. 

war and speculation, a direct relation of cause 
and effect. 

Do you ask: Whence come the poor of 
America? We answer unhesitatingly: Many 
of them are the offspring of our war. You 
say: The war was unavoidable. It was 
forced upon the nation. True, but we are not 
now dealing with that question. We are con- 
cerned only with its economic results. What- 
ever its causes and circumstances, the war was 
a fearful waste economically, and this fact 
should never be forgotten. Our war with 
Spain and the fighting in the Philippines are 
trifles compared with the Civil War, and it is 
too early yet to compute the cost, for we know 
not how far away the end may be. Still we 
know that millions have already been expended, 
priceless lives sacrificed, and the steady in- 
dustry of the nation disturbed. We know too 
that we are paying for this war not only in the 
direct channels of special revenue, but also in 
indirect ways by the increased cost of the 
necessaries of life. We do well to study 
the enormous cost of war in the light of 
our national experience. The lesson should 
be stamped upon the minds of every statesman 
in our halls of legislation; it should be im- 
printed upon the hearts of our citizens; it 
should be taught to the rising generation so 
plainly that a repetition of the war would be 
forever impossible. The facts are stupendous. 



The Tax on Barbarism. m 

And if a single war could cause so heavy a 
drain upon national and individual wealth, 
what must be the sum total of the impoverish- 
ment arising from the many wars constantly 
waged in different parts of the world? Yet 
men are slow to learn the blessedness of peace. 

The tax on barbarism, as the cost of war may 
fitly be called, is far greater than most of us 
imagine. We call this an age of peace and of 
enlightenment; but we are paying enormous 
sums every year for this destructive service. 

The United States has a standing army that 
excites the contempt of the less enlightened 
nations, and receives much severe criticism 
from many of our own short-sighted states- 
men and economists. Small as it is, however, 
our annual expenditure for its support is about 
fifty-four millions of dollars. This directly, 
and many millions more that can never be 
gathered in statistical tables. 

Our own outlay in this direction is a mere 
bagatelle when compared with that of other na- 
tions. Look across the Atlantic and see Eu- 
rope spending $3,867,500,000 every year on 
her standing armies and navies. See about 
four millions of men held in constant idleness, 
or engaged in unproductive, nay worse, in de- 
structive labor. Besides these are more than 
sixteen million men trained for war, and sub- 
ject to call at a moment's notice. These are 
the best men of Europe; young men, strong 



ii2 The Why of Poverty. 

men, energetic, ambitious men, the bone and 
sinew of England, Germany, France, Spain, 
and the other countries. If they could be re- 
leased from demoralizing army service they 
would perform useful labor to the value of 
nearly a billion dollars annually. But we have 
told less than half the truth when we say that 
four millions of men are required for the peace 
footing of Europe's standing army. For in 
addition to those who do nothing but drill and 
prepare for purposes of destruction, is another 
army of men engaged in supplying them with 
materials for their service. The manufac- 
ture of guns, torpedoes, ammunition, food and 
clothing for the army, employs a great many 
laborers. Think of the number of men en- 
gaged in the construction of a modern iron- 
clad. You must not stop with the work done 
in the navy yard; but you must go back to 
every ton of iron and coal used, to the men en- 
gaged in extracting the ore from the earth and 
in making the raw iron into its various forms, 
to the men engaged in making the elaborate 
machinery connected with it, and so on ad in- 
finitum. Then consider that the labor of this 
countless army is absolutely thrown away ; that 
they produce only for destruction and waste. 
Thus in time of peace Europe is paying several 
billions of dollars a year for the maintenance 
of armies and navies. The nations are ex- 
pending in preparations for war more than 



The Tax on Barbarism. 113 

enough to feed all the poor of the United 
States, — yes, of the whole world. Truly has 
it been said: " If we could do away with all 
w r ar, and with all standing armies for half a 
century, the world would become so comfort- 
able and so respectable that it would not know 
itself." 

But the gates of the Temple of Janus are 
seldom shut in the Old World. The European 
powers are engaged in almost constant war- 
fare. Look over the history of the past few 
years. In 1872 there w T as the Franco-Prus- 
sian war, which cost France $1,500,000,000 in 
money paid directly as an indemnity to her 
conqueror, not to speak of cities and homes 
devastated and lands laid waste. There fol- 
lowed in rapid succession the Ashantee war, 
the Russo-Turkish war, the Transvaal and 
Zulu wars, the Afghan war, the Egyptian and 
Soudan wars, the French Tonquin war, the 
Mahdi war, and the Burmese war. And even 
now a second war is in progress iu the Trans- 
vaal, and a war cloud hangs dark and threat- 
ening over China. Can we wonder that 
the war debts of Europe aggregate $24,- 
113,057,650, and that nearly one billion 
dollars are annually paid out for interest on 
these debts? Our statesmen point to the pov- 
erty of European peasants and lay it at the 
door of free trade or protection, as the case 
may be. Our social reformers declare it to 
8 



1 14 The Why of Poverty. 

be the result of a false system of land tenure 
or what not. But Mr. Evarts expresses the 
truth of the matter in a single sentence when 
he says : ' The difference between the Ger- 
man and American farmer is not so much in 
hard work or high prices as in the fact that 
every German zvorkingman carries a soldier 
on his back/' 

The dominant feeling in America which 
opposes a large standing army is by all means 
to be commended. Such armies are the most 
terrible means of oppression and impoverish- 
ment the world has ever seen. Says Dr. Beh- 
rends : "A standing army is the creation of 
fear, and the instrument of oppression. It is 
a confession of distrust between neighbors ; and 
a man who holds a dagger in one hand and 
a spade in the other, cannot do even half a 
day's work well. The camps must give place 
to factories and farms ; the swords must be 
beaten into plowshares, and the spears into 
pruning hooks, and the sweet spirit of con- 
fiding childhood pervade the nations, before 
the economic millennium can come." 

The nations of the world are daily becoming 
more closely knit together in their interests. 
International contacts are many times more 
numerous than they were one hundred years 
ago. Swiftness of modern intercommunica- 
tion has made distance of little account, and 
the facilities and necessities of commerce 



The Tax on Barbarism. 115 

make the most remote nations neighbors. As 
the decades and centuries pass the brotherhood 
of humanity reveals itself with ever increasing 
significance. Neutrals suffer more in modern 
than in ancient wars. A war on one side of 
the globe carries its depressing influence to the 
opposite side. Every nation feels the pain 
when one is wounded. If in any quarter 
there comes a temporary quickening of trade 
or industry, it is like the unnatural strength 
which a sick man derives from alcoholic or 
other stimulants, only a momentary advan- 
tage to be paid for with interest in the future. 
Some rich speculators in America may be made 
richer through the necessities of war in some 
foreign land ; but the poor of America are only 
made poorer by such an occurrence. 

It does not require any very great keenness 
of vision or skill in reasoning to see how this 
must be the case. A war, wherever it occurs, 
implies the absolute destruction of a vast 
amount of wealth. The valuable products 
employed in carrying on the war are not con- 
sumed but destroyed. They are placed beyond 
the reach of man for future consumption. The 
world is therefore impoverished to the extent 
of the aggregate cost of the war, reckoning all 
its many elements, the money directly ex- 
pended, the loss of property and life, the loss 
by industries blocked and commerce injured 
and society demoralized, the labor of all en- 



n6 The Why of Poverty. 

gaged in manufacturing or producing the mu- 
nitions of war, and the army of men prevented 
from engaging in productive labor. Not 
Europe alone, but the whole world is several 
billions of dollars poorer every year because 
of the immense standing armies maintained 
" to keep the peace/' Never was a greater 
fallacy than the notion that American working- 
men are better off because of the idleness of 
so many men in Europe. The nations are 
one in this matter. This enormous expendi- 
ture is draining the treasury of the world, and 
America suffers with Europe. Mere trade or 
the circulation of money does not constitute 
wealth. Wealth is measured by the abundance 
of useful production. The greater the pro- 
duction of those things that satisfy human 
need, the greater the wealth of the world. If, 
therefore, we could increase the producing 
force of the world by several millions of in- 
telligent, able-bodied men while at the same 
time we saved as many billions of dollars 
worth of waste or useless expenditure, would 
not all men the world over be enriched by the 
process? The answer is self-evident. 

We repeat, then, war is a relic of barbarism. 
It is an unmitigated evil. It causes a large 
draught upon the prosperity, not of one or two 
nations alone, but of all nations. It destroys 
the vital resources of the world. It wastes 
material wealth. It paralyzes all legitimate 



The Tax on Barbarism. 117 

industry and blocks the wheels of economic 
progress. Every honest laborer, therefore, 
and every friend of industry ought to be a 
peace man. We should rejoice in every move- 
ment that is made in the interests of peace. 
We should honor that statesmanship that 
seeks to maintain peaceful relations with all 
the world. We should deprecate every utter- 
ance that tends to excite a warlike spirit, as 
an echo of the dark ages, and every custom 
that fosters a love for war should be done 
away. 

The ancient Greeks and Romans wisely por- 
trayed the Golden Age as an age of universal 
peace; for only in peace can be laid the foun- 
dations of general and lasting prosperity. 
Modern reformers expatiate upon the evils of 
existing social and political systems. They 
advocate changes in land tenure and preach the 
"single tax" doctrine; or they discuss the 
relative influence of free trade and protection 
upon the poorer classes of the people. Of 
course these different systems all have a bear- 
ing upon the fact and degree of existing pov- 
erty. Doubtless changes may be effected 
which shall in some slight measure tend to 
equalize the distribution of wealth. But all 
of them put together would not relieve the 
burdens of our working classes to such an ex- 
tent as would the cessation of war and the 
disbanding of standing armies. Cobden 



n8 The Why of Poverty. 

Clubs may have a work to do, and Anti-Pov- 
erty Societies may accomplish some useful end ; 
but the Peace Societies of our own and other 
nations deserve a high place among the friends 
of the poor and the workingman. As their 
principles prevail and their work advances a 
great burden will be lifted from the world 
which will bring direct relief to every strug- 
gling laborer in all lands. 

It is not uncommon for political dema- 
gogues and sensational newspaper paragraph- 
ers to criticize our national armament. 

Our coast defenses have been declared in- 
adequate. Our standing army has been ridi- 
culed. Our navy has been sneered at. Many 
of our citizens long to see in this country a 
military establishment like that of Great Brit- 
ain and the other European powers; and they 
murmur at the national policy that keeps army 
and navy and defenses at the minimum. Yet 
this is the true policy for a progressive people. 
It accords with the principles of soundest 
economy and most enlightened statesmanship. 
As a people we want neither war nor prepa- 
rations for war; but peace only, universal 
peace. Already we suffer enough from the 
effects of war. Already our citizens are suffi- 
ciently impoverished by its excessive burdens. 
Why not make an end of war? Why not 
treat with other nations as though war were 
out of the question? The time is ripe for 



The Tax on Barbarism. 119 

the announcement of the most unqualified 
peace principles. As a people we alone are 
fitted to take the lead in this matter. The 
spirit of the age demands that it be done. The 
true interests of our laboring people demand it. 
The onward movement of social reform de- 
mands it. 



120 The Why of Poverty. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE ECONOMICS OF THE STRIKE. 

The man who burned his barn to destroy 
the rats that ate his corn has been much 
laughed at for his folly. Yet he has many 
imitators even among those who laugh loudest. 
For this barn-burning is no imaginary fable; 
it is an every-day fact which is of late becom- 
ing only too common. Again and again we 
see this suicidal method of cure applied to the 
ills of society, and it is growing in favor with 
those whom it injures most. Men destroy the 
sources of their own livelihood and doom them- 
selves to poverty or starvation in the vain at- 
tempt to injure others who are filching a few 
handfuls from the store. Hungry mobs, in- 
spired by envy and revenge, set fire to car- 
loads of corn and other food and in a few 
hours destroy that which would satisfy their 
hunger for many days. Restless workers de- 
mand higher wages, and if their demands are 
not promptly met, by wanton acts they empty 
the treasuries from which their wages come 
as though wages could be increased by such 
means. Idlers ask for work, and then, as a 



The Economics of the Strike. 121 

means of securing it, block the very industries 
that would furnish them remunerative em- 
ployment. And so in many ways wealth is de- 
stroyed or production is hindered in the en- 
deavor to punish or to cripple those who are 
supposed to take more than their share. The 
result is always the same. The loss sustained 
in curing the evil is vastly greater than the evil 
itself. The blow aimed at a real or supposed 
thief rebounds with double force upon the 
striker. The rats scamper off in safety to new 
stores of corn, while he who kindled the flames 
mourns the loss of both store-house and corn^ 
and perhaps dies of starvation. 

In the recent developments of social agita- 
tion the strike has become a very popular 
means of adjusting difficulties. Workmen be- 
come dissatisfied with their wages or with the 
hours of labor or they feel that in some way 
or other the treatment they receive at the hands 
of their employers is unjust, and immediately 
they strike. Or employers have some griev- 
ance against their workmen, and a lockout en- 
sues. In their essential nature the strike and 
the lockout are identical, the lockout being 
only a strike on the part of employers. In 
either of its forms a strike implies the stop- 
page of valuable production, and a consequent 
loss of material wealth. Although there may 
be no destructive violence, yet he who hinders 
a day's productive labor, impoverishes the 



122 The Why of Poverty. 

community just as much as he who destroys 
the wealth that has already been produced in 
a day. Whoever strikes for higher wages, by 
his own act paralyzes the hand that would pay 
the wages. 

Within the past five or ten years strikes have 
become almost an every-day occurrence in our 
land. We can scarcely take up a daily news- 
paper without seeing an account of some such 
disturbance in the industrial world. In fact 
the strike is considered by many as a neces- 
sary method of settling the differences between 
employers and workmen. As the old-fash- 
ioned doctors were accustomed to bleed every 
patient, thus reducing his already exhausted 
vital powers, as the first step towards his resto- 
ration; so the modern social agitator would cure 
the ills of poverty by first impoverishing so- 
ciety. Strikes are a great waste of material 
wealth, to say nothing of their moral results. 
As they are too often conducted, they imply 
the absolute destruction of wealth; and when 
conducted in the best possible manner they ne- 
cessitate a great loss to the community. It 
usually happens that the loss falls most heavily 
in the end upon those who take part in the 
strike. 

Perhaps we should not say that strikes are 
always indefensible or that they are wholly 
unnecessary. They are, like war, an extreme 
measure, and may be forced upon those who 



The Economics of the Strike. 123' 

recognize their wastefulness. Those who are 
most directly concerned in a strike may not 
be really responsible for its occurrence or for 
its results, and we ought not too hastily to 
lay the blame on their shoulders ; but whenever 
a strike is carried beyond the most peaceful 
measures, whatever its provocation, overt vio- 
lence is always chargeable to the immediate 
perpetrators. In the case of a peaceful and 
lawfully conducted strike, if such there be, we 
may be obliged to unravel some intricate 
meshes of cause before we can say with any de- 
gree of justice where the blame rests. But 
whoever is responsible for them, the fact re- 
mains beyond the possibility of dispute that 
strikes are a great waste; and any adjustment 
of the relations of labor and capital which 
shall put an end to the necessity or possibility 
of strikes will be an immense boon to our na- 
tion. It will save millions of dollars annually, 
and will be an important factor in the relief 
of poverty. 

In the U. S. Census report for 1880 we find 
the following suggestive figures regarding the 
strikes and lockouts of the previous year. The 
total amount of wages lost during the year was 
$3,711,097. The aggregate number of days 
lost by idleness was 1,989,872. The number 
of men idle was 64,779. The proportion of 
strikes to lockouts was — strikes 88 per cent., 
lockouts 12 per cent. 



124 The Why of Poverty. 

It will be observed that no account is made 
of any losses excepting those necessarily in- 
volved in every strike, viz. : the loss of wages 
and of productive labor. Many people forget 
this latter item, and think only of the wages, 
but the loss of labor is always greater than the 
amount of wages, since a day's work must not 
only equal in value the wages paid, but must 
bring at least a slight profit besides. Hence 
the direct loss of wealth caused by the strikes 
of 1879 was something over seven millions of 
dollars, to which doubtless there should be 
added a large sum for property destroyed and 
productive labor indirectly hampered. And 
when we have gathered them all the figures are 
much smaller than for any subsequent year. 

Official reports estimate the loss of wages in 
the St. Louis railroad strike of 1886 to have 
been one million dollars. And that was but one 
of many strikes during the same year, though 
it was probably greater than any of the others. 
Here, too, we must reckon the loss in produc- 
tive labor, which would add more than an- 
other million, making more than two million 
dollars direct loss in a single strike. 

Still greater were the losses in the great rail- 
way strike of 1877. To say that one hundred 
thousand men were idle for many days, and to 
compute the amount of wages lost, would but 
feebly indicate the cost of that movement. 
According to the census report, and also the 



The Economics of the Strike. 125 

report of the Senate committee, the direct loss 
of railway property destroyed by fire and other- 
wise in the city of Pittsburg alone is estimated 
at from eight to ten million dollars. Profes- 
sor Ely in his book, The Labor Movement in 
America, states that the total loss of property 
in different parts of the country was not less 
than one hundred million dollars. Add to this 
the fact that the entire railway system of the 
United States was disturbed, and trade inter- 
rupted, and the loss will appear very much 
greater. We are as a nation at the present 
time dependent on the railways as never before. 
The railroad is a necessity to make possible our 
enormous exchanges of products. The farms 
of the West are useless without easy access to 
the markets of the East; and the factories of 
the East must close their doors if they are cut 
off from communication with the rest of the 
country. If even for a few days our chief 
lines of railway should stop their traffic, there 
would be intense suffering in many parts of 
the country. Any extended railroad blockade 
would be felt to the remotest village on the 
continent. Not tradesmen only, but farmers 
and laborers of every kind would feel the effect 
of the depression. Every city from the At- 
lantic to the Pacific felt the shock of that great 
strike ; and we can imagine, though we cannot 
compute, the loss of trade arising from want 
of communication, and the loss of perishable 



126 The Why of Poverty. 

freight which must be added to all figures that 
are given regarding the strike. There was in 
that strike a wanton destruction of property 
surpassing anything that has occurred in recent 
strikes. Thousands of bushels of corn and 
other provisions were burned with the railroad 
property by men who were clamoring for food. 
The original purpose of the strike seems to 
have been lost sight of by many in the insane 
desire for destruction and revenge. 

The engineers' strike on the Chicago, Bur- 
lington & Quincy railroad in March, 1888, is 
still fresh in the minds of all. It was remark- 
able chiefly for the persistence with which the 
men held together, and the attempts that were 
made to force the other railroads of the country 
into a participation in the strike. The fol- 
lowing estimates have been published regard- 
ing the cost of the strike : 

Loss of wages on the C. B. & Q. road $306,135 

Pay-roll of the Brotherhood 159,450 

Grievance committee's loss of wages 30,870 

" " expense account 22,050 

Non-union men subsidized 20,000 

Expense of headquarters 3,375 

Santa Fe, and other strikes , 24,700 

Cost of switchmen's strike 25.000 

Miscellaneous loss to workmen 10,000 

Loss to Road in traffic receipts 1 ,800,000 

Cost of engaging new men 50,000 

Special police protection « 180,000 

Damage to property 50,000 

Miscellaneous 20,000 

Total cost of strike #2,701,580 



The Economics of the Strike. 127 

Still more recent is the Homestead strike, 
[which took place in the Carnegie mills in June, 
1892, and which was an utter failure. Con- 
servative estimates reckon the cost of that strike 
at $10,000,000. Of this sum about $2,500,- 
000 were in wages to the men. The firm's 
loss was nearly three times as much. The 
direct cost of troops was about $500,000. The 
secondary losses must also have been very 
great. 

Not long ago a committee appointed by the 
U. S. Senate to investigate the relations be- 
tween capital and labor, included in their re- 
port the following figures regarding a series 
of strikes in different parts of Europe. They 
are most carefully authenticated. 

In the year 1871, 9,000 engineers struck, 
losing 20 weeks of time, and $900,000 in 
wages. 15,000 striking bolt makers were idle 
40 weeks and lost in wages $300,000. Col- 
liers struck to the number of 18,000, were idle 
12 weeks, and lost in wages the sum of $1,- 
980,000. In the year 1872, 10,000 builders 
struck and were idle 12 weeks, losing $600,000. 
In 1873, 70,000 colliers w r ere idle on a strike 
11 weeks, and lost $3,850,000 in wages. In 
1877, masons numbering 17,000 were idle 33 
weeks at a loss of $2,800,000. And in 1878, 
30,000 cotton mill hands stayed out on 
a strike 9 weeks at a loss in wages of $1,150,- 
000. 



128 The Why of Poverty. 

In all these cases we have the minimum 
figures, representing only the three necessary 
elements of loss which enter into every strike, 
namely, the loss of wages, the wasted time, 
and the number of men withdrawn from pro- 
ductive labor. It is easy to see that if this 
were the whole story, a strike is an expensive 
luxury, a great drain upon the wealth of the 
community. But the figures already given re- 
garding the railroad strikes in our own land 
show that these three elements constitute very 
much less than the total amount of loss. There 
are other chapters to the story. Other ele- 
ments enter in which greatly increase the cost 
of the strike to the community. There is the 
destruction of property, the stoppage of com- 
merce, the crippling of other related indus- 
tries, and the unsettling of public confidence 
which is so essential to commercial prosperity 
and social strength. 

The question which presents itself to every 
workingman of to-day is, Do strikes pay? In 
view of the statistics already given, but one an- 
swer is possible. Strikes do not pay. They 
never have paid ; and they never can pay. Can 
any sane man imagine that the poor people 
or the laborers of the land were made any 
richer by the absolute destruction of one hun- 
dred million dollars of the national wealth in 
1877? Who is so foolish as to suppose that 
the C. B. & Q. railroad was in a position to 



The Economics of the Strike. 129 

pay better wages to its engineers after a loss 
of nearly three millions of dollars? Or the 
Carnegie Company after a much greater loss? 
Any man who will give the subject a moment's 
thought can understand that every dollar of 
wealth destroyed, every day of idleness, every 
hour of productive labor hindered, makes the 
community poorer, and drains the sources of 
supply from which poor and rich alike draw 
their sustenance. 

But some will say that while it is true that 
the community as a whole is made poor, the 
workmen do gain something by a successful 
strike. They compel a more equitable division 
of the products of labor, and so even though 
the remedy be severe, its final effects justify 
the means used. Many who would not for a 
moment countenance lawlessness or the de- 
struction of property, look upon the strike 
when free from these elements as a reasonable 
method of securing justice in the relations 
of employer and employee. The following 
figures have been presented as proving the gain 
to workmen accruing from a successful strike. 
They are gathered from the statistics of a 
series of successful strikes in various parts of 
Great Britain which occurred between the 
years 1873 an d 1878. 

In the year 1873, from a total of 8,900 work- 
men in various trades and communities, 1,000 
struck for higher wages. The loss in wages 
9 



130 The Why of Poverty. 

averaged $9.00 a week for 4 weeks, making an 
aggregate !°ss of $36,000. The strike being 
successful, the workmen received $3.75 each 
per week for the 4 weeks of the strike, and 
secured an advance in wages for the entile 
number (8,900), averaging 62 1-2 cents each 
per week, or an aggregate of $289,250 for a 
year. We have then as a result of these 
strikes a net gain to the workingmen of $268,- 
250 in a year. 

In 1874, from a total of 10,700 men, 1,100 
struck. Loss in wages at $9.00 per week for 
4 weeks, $39,600. Strike pay at $3.75 per 
week, $16,500. Advance in wages at 62 1-2 
cents each per week, $347,750 for a year. 
Balance in favor of the workmen, $324,650. 

In 1875, from a total of 9,400 men, 1,050 
struck. Loss in wages at $9.00 per week for 
4 weeks, $37,800. Strike pay at $3.75 per 
week, $15,750. Advance in wages at 62 1-2 
cents each per week, $305,500 for a year. 
Balance in favor of the workmen, $283,450. 

In 1876, from a total of 10,500 men, 1,075 
struck. Loss in wages, at $9 each per week, 
4 weeks, $38,700. Strike pay at $3.75 each 
per week, $16,125. Advance in wages at 
66 2-3 cents each per week, $364,035 for a 
year. Balance in favor of the workmen, $326,- 

335- 

In 1877, from a total of 6,500 men, 900 

struck. Loss in wages at $9 each per week 4 



The Economics of the Strike. 131 

weeks, $32,400. Strike pay at $3.75 each per 
week, $13,500. Advance in wages at 58 1-3 
cents each per week, $197,145 for a year. 
Balance in favor of the workmen, $178,245. 

In 1878, from a total of 1,300 men, 500 
struck. Loss in wages at $9 each per week 4 
weeks, $18,000. Strike pay at $3.75 per week, 
$7,500. Advance in wages at 56 1-4 cents 
each per week, $38,025 for a year. Balance 
in favor of the workmen, $27,525. (See 
Frazer's Mag., vol. c, p. 777,) 

The figures here given do not represent all 
the strikes which occurred in the years men- 
tioned. They w T ere taken from the successful 
strikes only. During the same years there were 
very many strikes that were wholly or partially 
unsuccessful, and they were a total loss to the 
strikers as well as to the community in general. 
It will be observed that the amount of gain 
in each case is for one year only. The favor- 
able balance will have the more significance 
when we consider that in most cases the gain 
was permanent. 

This is the very best showing that can be 
made from a few of the most successful strikes, 
and the gain derived is wholly one-sided. We 
must always remember, however, that this gain 
is fully counterbalanced by the losses of the un- 
successful strikes. Very many, especially of 
the more recent strikes, are unsuccessful and 
result not only in a loss of time and wages 



132 The Why of Poverty. 

while the strike is in progress, but often large 
numbers of workmen are thrown out of em- 
ployment and forced to remain for a long time 
in idleness or to seek other work to which they 
are unaccustomed. Such an unsuccessful 
strike occurred recently in the coke regions 
of Pennsylvania. The strikers lost $100,000 
in wages, and of the 12,000 men who went 
out, 5,000 were permanently discharged. The 
engineers' strike on the C. B. & Q. railroad was 
also a total failure. The waste of three mil- 
lion dollars brought no gain at all to the 
strikers, but only resulted in a complete vic- 
tory for the management of the road, and the 
loss of thir positions for the greater portion of 
the men. Such has been the fate of nearly 
every great strike in America, so that were we 
to draw up a balance sheet the results of this 
method of settling labor disputes would be 
found to tell heavily against the workingmen. 
A strike organized without sufficient cause 
seldom succeeds. It ought not to succeed, 
since it is apt to disturb the peace of an entire 
community and cause greatest discomfort to 
those who are in no way concerned in the dis- 
pute from which it sprung. An ill-advised or 
an unjust strike may by its losses more than 
counterbalance the gain derived from one that 
is successful. From this point of view strikes 
pay in the inverse ratio of their frequency; 



The Economics of the Strike. 133 

but at best they pay one class of society at the 
expense of others. 

This fact ought ever to be kept in mind. In 
a certain limited sense peaceful and successful 
strikes are profitable to the workmen. But 
every strike, whether successful or not, is a 
total loss to the community as a whole. Thus, 
referring to the illustrations given above, in 
the year 1873 the community lost $36,000, plus 
the profit thereon in productive labor. In 1874 
the loss was $39,600, plus profit. In 1875 
the loss was $37,800, plus profit. And so 
through all the years. This is the loss as it 
appears in the figures given, and no one can 
tell how much of incidental loss should be 
added. And this loss can never be made up in 
any way. It is like so much wealth cast into 
the flames and utterly consumed. 

A strike is a war measure which may at 
times be necessary (if war is ever necessary) 
to meet oppression and dishonesty, and to se- 
cure the rights of a particular class of men; 
but the time wasted, the property destroyed, 
and the production hindered are an absolute 
loss to the world at large. They are the in- 
demnity which society pays for injustice. 

By draining the treasury of our land at the 
rate of more than ten millions of dollars every 
year, strikes have become a prominent factor 
among the causes of poverty. They have in- 
creased the evil they were designed to cure. 



134 The Why of Poverty. 

They have opened a wide avenue of waste 
whose effects are felt most keenly by laboring 
men. Surely their day is nearly past. The in- 
telligence of American workingmen will not 
long permit them to use so expensive and bar- 
barous a remedy for social diseases. The pro- 
gressive spirit of the age demands the use of 
methods which shall be at once more econom- 
ical and more permanent in their results. 



The Economics of Speculation. 135 



CHAPTER XL 

THE ECONOMICS OF SPECULATION. 

To speculate is American. In no other 
country is speculation carried on to such an ex- 
tent as in ours. The sum total of our specu- 
lative trade presses close upon the aggregate of 
our national wealth. The practice of specula- 
tion is well-nigh universal. We have profes- 
sional speculators and amateur speculators. 
We speculate in produce, we speculate in land. 
We speculate in manufactures, in railways, in 
mines, in stocks and bonds, in gold, in iron, 
in live stock. We speculate in anything and 
everything. The rich speculate and the poor 
speculate. Saints speculate, and sinners specu- 
late. Not only bankers and brokers, but mer- 
chants, mechanics, lawyers, doctors, legisla- 
tors, ministers of the Gospel, dry-goods clerks, 
newsboys, and bootblacks, endeavor to multi- 
ply their legitimate earnings by some form of 
speculation. Even ladies who must earn their 
own livelihood are trying their skill in the 
way of speculation; and many a snug little 
fortune has been accumulated by the keen spec- 
ulative instinct of women. 



136 The Why of Poverty. 

Of course the entire amount of the specula- 
tive trade throughout the entire country can- 
not be accurately estimated; for its methods 
and forms are too complex to be easily traced. 
But a glance at the work of some of the prin- 
cipal centers of speculation is sufficient to show 
how enormously disproportionate is this ele- 
ment in our national commerce. The trans- 
actions of the Chicago Board of Trade amount 
to more than three billions of dollars in a 
single year; of which more than seven-eighths 
are purely speculative. The speculative trades 
of the various Exchanges in New York are es- 
timated at from four to five billions annually. 
These sums are, however, small in comparison 
with the deals of the Stock Exchange. Several 
years ago it was estimated that the par value 
of the annual sales in the New York Stock 
Exchange exceeds twenty-two billion dollars. 
The entire wealth of the country in 1880 was 
less than forty-four billions of dollars, or less 
than double the sum involved in the transac- 
tions of this single Exchange. 

The smaller cities have their Boards of Trade 
which do a business corresponding with their 
size and importance. An experienced mem- 
ber of the Chicago Board estimates their num- 
ber at more than fifteen hundred. The trans- 
actions of the Stock Exchange are repeated 
with small amounts in almost every broker's 
office in the land. In every community we 



The Economics of Speculation. 137 

find men trying to imitate with their limited 
resources the movements of the Bulls and 
Bears of Wall Street. These minor enter- 
prises taken separately appear insignificant in 
comparison with the traffic at the great centers 
of speculation; but the vast number of them 
taken together gives an aggregate which is by 
no means trifling. 

It needs no argument to prove that this 
speculative element in our commerce, involv- 
ing as it does such immense sums of money 
and extending so widely through all classes of 
society, exerts a controlling influence for the 
quickening or depression of trade, and be- 
comes an important factor in the distribution 
(or rather in the disturbance) of wealth. 
Plainly the economic effect of so much specula- 
tion must be either very good or very bad; 
but whether it is good or whether it is bad is 
not so plain, if we may judge from the dis- 
agreement of the doctors. Opinions differ 
very widely upon the subject. One class of 
economists declares that, " Speculation is the 
Soul of Trade." Another class, with equal 
confidence, asserts that speculation is subver- 
sive of the interests of legitimate trade. A 
financial panic sweeps over the land and many 
voices are heard denouncing speculators as the 
cause of the trouble. Other voices as many 
and as loud defend speculation and find the 
cause of the disturbance elsewhere. Yet in 



138 The Why of Poverty. 

their disagreement all are agreed on one point. 
Every voice, whether raised in denunciation or 
defense, testifies to the extent of speculation 
and its important influence in every commercial 
movement. In these days of economic study 
and social agitation, when so much is said 
about the causes and cure of poverty, the un- 
equal distribution of wealth, and kindred sub- 
jects, we naturally turn to the question of 
speculation, expecting to find in it the key by 
which some of these other questions may be 
solved. 

In his work on Progress and Poverty, 
Mr. Henry George says : " Production and 
consumption fail to meet and satisfy each 
other. How does this inability arise? It is 
evidently and by common consent the result 
of speculation. But of speculation in what? 
Certainly not of speculation in things which 
are the products of labor, — in agricultural or 
mineral productions, or manufactured goods; 
for the effect of speculation in such things, as 
is well shown in current treatises which spare 
me the necessity of illustration, is simply to 
equalize supply and demand, and to steady the 
interplay of consumption and production by 
an action analogous to that of a fly-wheel in a 
machine. Therefore if speculation be the 
cause of these industrial depressions, it must 
be speculation in things not the production of 
labor, but yet necessary to the exertion of labor 



The Economics of Speculation. 139 

in the production of wealth, — of things of 
fixed quantity ; that is to say, it must be specu- 
lation in land." 

This is the way in which the founder of the 
great Anti-Poverty Society disposes of the 
question of speculation and makes it pay trib- 
ute to his pet theory. The utter absence of 
argument and proof must strike any but the 
most thoughtless. Moreover his conclusion is 
at once illogical and wholly inconsistent with 
observed facts. Speculation is speculation 
wherever it appears, and its nature and effects 
are everywhere the same. The most casual 
study shows us that speculation in land is a 
mere peccadillo when compared with the other 
forms of speculation carried on in America. 
Furthermore, even at the risk of seeming to 
contradict (for, as we shall see later, the con- 
tradiction is only seeming), that somewhat un- 
certain authority expressed in the general 
phrase " current treatises/' we assert that no 
form of speculation tends to equalize supply 
and demand, or to steady the interplay of pro- 
duction and consumption. Very far from it. 
The sole tendency of speculation in anything is 
to disturb the equilibrium of trade, to hinder 
legitimate exchange, and to increase the in- 
equality in the distribution of wealth. 

In our great metropolis we see " grinding 
poverty and fabulous wealth walk side by 
side." In the tenements and attics are huddled 



140 The Why of Poverty. 

together multitudes of poor workers of every 
sort struggling night and day against starva- 
tion, not a few of them driven to lives of sin 
or a suicide's death by the power of despair. 
Close by them on the grand avenues we may 
meet men whose fortunes are almost incredi- 
ble. The Vanderbilt property exceeds two 
hundred millions of dollars, and Jay Gould 
forgets whether he signed a check for five mil- 
lions or fifty millions. What is the cause of 
this startling inequality? What has taken the 
money from the pockets of the many and swept 
it into the coffers of the few? I answer in a 
word, — Speculation. 

I do not mean to say that all the very rich 
or all the very poor are speculators; for that 
would be manifestly untrue. A. T. Stewart 
was not a speculator, yet at his death he was 
worth fifty millions of dollars. John Jacob 
Astor accumulated twenty millions, of which 
only a small portion was the fruit of specula- 
tion. The elder Vanderbilt amassed a fortune 
of from sixty to a hundred millions, much of it 
entirely independent of speculation. On the 
other hand very many of the poorest people 
have never meddled with speculation. There 
are other causes, specified in the foregoing 
chapters, which must account for many indi- 
vidual cases of poverty and a few of the large 
fortunes in the land ; but speculation is the 
underlying force which, more than any other. 



The Economics of Speculation. 141 

disturbs the natural laws and conditions of 
trade, and brings about such inequality of 
wealth where all should be comfortable and 
none should be overburdened with riches. 

Doubtless Mr. George, in the expression 
u current treatises," refers, among others, to 
the works of John Stuart Mill, who says : 
" The operations of speculative dealers are use- 
ful to the public when profitable to themselves ; 
and though they are sometimes injurious to 
the public, by heightening the fluctuations 
which their more usual office is to alleviate, 
yet whenever this happens, the speculators are 
the greatest losers." Similar statements may 
be found in the writings of other well-known 
economists. With them I have no dispute; 
for their meaning is clear to one who reads 
their works, and the truthfulness of their con- 
clusions is for the most part unquestioned. 
But they use the word " speculation " in a pe- 
culiar sense, and one that is nearly obsolete at 
the present day; a sense quite different from 
that which Americans attach to it. In fact 
the meaning of the word has been undergoing 
a process of evolution during the past half 
century, so that what our fathers called specu- 
lation we should fail to recognize under that 
title. Some writers make a distinction be- 
tween " legitimate " and " excessive " specu- 
lation ; whereas all speculation in the modern 
sense is excessive. 



142 The Why of Poverty. 

We must carefully distinguish between the 
two different senses in which the word is used. 
When Mr. Mill and economists of his class 
use the word, they apply it to transactions 
based upon the actual possession and exchange 
of the commodities involved. With them it 
signifies nothing more than trade in which un- 
usual risks are taken. The man who buys up 
the surplus wheat crop of this year in order that 
he may profit by the probable shortage next 
year is a speculator in this sense of the word. 
So also is the man who buys railroad or bank 
stocks and holds them till an increase in their 
value enables him to sell them at a good profit. 
Speculation in land belongs, strictly, speaking, 
to this same class, since it implies the actual 
buying and selling of land. I do not know 
that there is any form of speculation in land 
that does not imply a real transfer of owner- 
ship. 

The form of speculation which prevails most 
extensively in our country to-day is essentially 
different from this. It consists in the transfer 
of paper contracts merely and has little or no 
foundation in actual exchange of commodities. 
It is in reality only a form of gambling or 
betting upon the chances of a rise or fall in the 
price of any given commodity, and is carried 
on without reference to real possession. Thou- 
sands of young men speculate in stocks who 
never have money enough at any time to pur- 



The Economics of Speculation. 143 

chase whole shares of any stock. Having 
scraped together a few dollars, they invest in 
" margins," that is, they deposit with a 
broker enough money to cover the change in 
value of a few shares of stock within a limited 
range. If the stock falls to the limit within 
the time specified, the depositor loses his 
money. If it rises, he wins the amount of in- 
crease. In either case he has not owned a single 
share of stock, and perhaps his broker has not. 
Similar to this are the methods of speculation 
in the various exchanges. While a few men 
really buy and sell wheat, the majority of spec- 
ulators buy and sell promises. One man 
makes a contract with another to sell him a 
million bushels of wheat at a certain price and 
time. He neither owns nor intends to own 
any wheat; but when the time comes to fulfil 
his contract, if the price of wheat has risen 
above the stipulated price, he settles with the 
purchaser by paying the difference. If the 
price has fallen, the purchaser pays him the 
difference. From the first neither buyer nor 
seller expected any other outcome of the trade. 
By far the greater part of the speculation in 
our land consists in these fictitious or paper 
trades. For example, the entire cotton crop 
of the world, available for American and Eu- 
ropean consumption, is about seven million 
bales of four hundred and twenty-five pounds 
each in a year. The amount of cotton sold in 



144 The Why of Poverty, 

the exchanges is over eighty million bales, hav- 
a value of five billion dollars. In this case the 
ratio of fictitious trades to the real is more 
than ten to one. When less than seventy 
million bushels of wheat are received at the 
New York Exchange, more than nine hundred 
millions are sold, giving about the same ratio 
as before. In the year 1882 the entire oil 
product of the country was twenty-four mil- 
lion barrels, and the amount sold in the Pe- 
troleum Exchange was two billion barrels, 
showing a ratio of more than eighty dollars of 
fictitious trade to one dollar of real trade. The 
same process is repeated with iron and coal and 
various other extensive products of the coun- 
try. 

Now it does not require any unusual keen- 
ness of intellect to distinguish between the dif- 
ferent uses of the term " speculation." As I 
have said, in the writings of the standard 
economists the word signifies any form of 
trade involving unusual risks with the ex- 
pectation of deriving unusual profits. In its 
modern sense, speculation implies the use of 
artificial methods to create trade and derive 
profits without regard to production or the 
law of supply and demand. The original use 
of the word has been superseded and wisely, 
for it was equally indefinite and unsatisfactory. 
In view of the countless and varied risks in 
trade, who can say at precisely what point a 



Ihe Economics of Speculation. 145 

risk becomes unusual? Or who can define 
unusual profits? In our day and land no risk 
and no profit would be universally recognized 
as unusual. On the other hand, the use of the 
term to signify artificial methods of trade and 
gain is very definite and meets with universal 
acceptance. It will be seen that this latter defi- 
nition covers all the speculative transactions 
described in the preceding pages ; whereas the 
older definition could only be applied to trans- 
actions of a wholly different nature which differ 
from ordinary trade simply in the amount of 
money involved, or in the commodities ex- 
changed. 

When Mr. Vanderbilt obtained control of 
the Harlem Railroad, and by his skilful man- 
agement of the road raised the price of the stock 
from about twenty per cent, of the par value 
to over two hundred per cent., the profit de- 
rived was natural and legitimate. The in- 
crease in the price of stock indicated a corre- 
sponding rise in value brought about by the 
improved condition of the railroad. But when 
a similar change was produced in the price 
of other railroad stocks by combination and 
manipulation of brokers, while the real value 
of the roads and stocks remained unchanged, 
that was speculation. The profits thus de- 
rived represented no benefit conferred upon the 
public, but were the fruit of artifice and fraud. 
The man who buys a whole railroad at once 
10 



146 The Why of Poverty. 

is not necessarily a speculator, any more than 
is the grocer who buys a dozen of eggs, in the 
expectation of selling them again at a profit. 

It is in its artificial nature that the evil of 
speculation consists; and whenever this arti- 
ficial element enters into trade its effect is evil 
and only evil. It is not a question of legiti- 
mate and excessive speculation. Whether 
little or much, speculation is always injurious 
in proportion to its extent. 

The paper contracts of the various Ex- 
changes already mentioned, involving billions 
of dollars, imply an actual loss on one side and 
gain on the other of hundreds of millions. 
This enormous sum of money does not repre- 
sent any benefit conferred on the community, 
any real value received, but is absorbed by the 
fortunate speculators without any return what- 
ever, leaving the country at large so much 
poorer. Worse than this, real prices every- 
where are largely determined, not by the nat- 
ural law of supply and demand, but by the fic- 
titious prices of speculators. Men pay for 
bread, not w T hat it actually costs to raise the 
wheat and manufacture it and carry it to them, 
but what can be extorted from them by the 
tricks and combinations of the Exchange gam- 
blers. The variations in the prices of the 
different necessary commodities as reported in 
the Exchanges are felt most keenly by the poor 



The Economics of Speculation. 147 

laborers of the world. Every transaction of a 
speculative nature increases the cost of the 
commodity involved by the amount of the 
profit made. 

The commercial history of America abounds 
with illustrations of the way in which the 
prices of the most necessary articles are arti- 
ficially raised and lowered when there has been 
no real inequality of supply and demand. 
Corners in wheat, gold, iron, and coal are of 
frequent occurrence. Thousands of poor peo- 
ple may be starving for want of bread while 
millions of bushels of wheat lie stored away 
in the elevators, held to compel a rise in prices. 
And when the rise comes a few men are made 
rich by means of the injury they have inflicted 
upon society. All this is plainly evil. In such 
transactions there is more of the dynamite 
bomb than of the " balance wheel." 

Again, take the case of speculation in stocks. 
The man who actually buys a number of shares 
in some good railway and receives his divi- 
dends from the earnings of the road, however 
large those dividends may be, is deriving 
profits for which the work of the railroad is 
an adequate return to society. The benefit is 
approximately equal to all parties concerned. 
On the other hand, the man who invests in 
margins or in stocks and derives a profit from 
the rise in price which is wholly independent of 
the real value of the stocks, receives money 



148 The Why of Poverty. 

for which he makes no return to society at 
large or to the individuals whose loss contrib- 
uted to his gain. In all such transactions 
every dollar of gain to one represents a corre- 
sponding dollar of loss to another. The al- 
most incredible fortunes that have been 
amassed in railroad speculation may be accu- 
rately measured by the losses of countless 
smaller speculators all over the land. Wall 
Street is the great financial Maelstrom into 
whose vortex are sucked the wages of many 
thousands of productive laborers. The move- 
ments of the stock market are analogous to the 
filling and squeezing of an immense sponge. 
The earnings of myriad workers all over the 
land are drawn into speculative trade by the 
hope of suddenly acquired riches, and when 
it is well filled the sponge is quietly squeezed 
into the pockets of the great speculators, leav- 
ing the vast majority of investors to mourn 
over their losses. The gain of a million dol- 
lars by one man on Wall Street may thus be- 
speak the loss of their entire savings for a 
thousand hard-working mechanics or artisans 
scattered from Maine to California. 

The effect of all speculation of this kind is to 
increase the inequality in the distribution of 
wealth, and to drive the extremes of society 
more widely apart than ever. By speculation 
as a rule the rich grow richer and the poor 
poorer. Since speculation depends for its sue- 



The Economics of Speculation. 149 

cess upon the artificial raising and lowering of 
prices, it is self-evident that the rich man who 
invests millions can exert a much greater in- 
fluence upon the market than the poor man 
who invests but a few dollars. The clerk of 
moderate means who invests ten dollars in 
margins is wholly at the mercy of the market. 
He must gain or lose as others shall determine. 
While a rich neighbor who has bought the 
same stocks is comparatively independent. 
When the price of stock is forced down, those 
who have expended their little surplus in mar- 
gins lose all as soon as the fall reaches a given 
point; but one whose resources are far in ad- 
vance of his investment can tide over the 
period of adverse fortune, and by holding his 
stock for a rise in prices may make a large 
profit in the end. It is this ceaseless crushing 
of small investors between their wheels that 
keeps the great speculators from ruining each 
other, and fills their pockets amid all the fluc- 
tuations of the market. 

A principle recognized by all true economists 
requires that for every dollar which an individ- 
ual receives from others, he should make an 
equivalent return. The speculator boldly sets 
this principle at defiance, and seeks to extort as 
many dollars as possible from his fellow-men 
without making any return. The result of 
speculation is the same as in the case of a 



150 The Why of Poverty. 

lottery or in ordinary gambling : — the few are 
enriched, the many are impoverished. 

When we consider that this process is con- 
stantly going on, that more than five hundred 
million dollars are annually transferred from 
the pockets of producers to the pockets of non- 
producers by a method equivalent to gambling 
with loaded dice, can we wonder at the grow- 
ing inequalities in our American society ? Do 
w^e not see in this fact an easy and abundant 
explanation of some of the problems that meet 
the social student of to-day? It must be evi- 
dent to all that so long as speculation continues 
the equitable (not equal) distribution of wealth 
cannot be realized, the equilibrium of society 
cannot be maintained, the greatest evils of 
poverty cannot be done away. Here is a cen- 
tripetal force of the first magnitude ever work- 
ing toward the centralization of wealth, and 
running counter to the fundamental principles 
of social economy. So long as the force con- 
tinues in operation we may expect the results 
to continue. If we would remove the results, 
we must first try to remove the cause which 
produces them. It is a time therefore when 
every sincere reformer and economist should 
declare plainly against speculation. The line 
should be carefully drawn between specula- 
tive and legitimate trade; and the former 
should be ruled out of all respectable business 
circles. 



The Ethics of Labor. 151 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE ETHICS OF LABOR. 

We hear a great deal just at the present 
time about the rights and wrongs of labor. 
Much has been said and written upon the sub- 
ject by thoughtful persons from every class of 
society, and by agitators and busybodies who 
are too often the very reverse of thoughtful. 
It is generally spoken of as a social question, 
and the moral aspect of the subject is by many 
either forgotten or ignored. Yet this is the 
most important of all elements, for it lies at 
the foundation of the subject. The words 
" rights " and " wrongs " are ethical terms, 
and whenever we use them we imply that we 
are dealing with a moral question, whether we 
recognize the fact or not. Whenever the terms 
are used in connection with labor and the la- 
borer, there is the implication that labor has a 
certain moral value or a certain moral relation 
to society and to wealth. In other words, 
the amount of labor which each individual 
must perform in the course of his life and 
the proportion of wealth that he shall re- 



152 The Why of Poverty. 

ceive in return for his labor are not mere prob- 
lems of science, to be solved by the skilful 
adjustment of social machinery, and largely 
conditioned by the changing relations of 
society. They are questions of real moral 
gravity, to be answered by an appeal to the 
eternal principles of truth and righteousness; 
and every man will be held accountable at the 
bar of Divine justice for the way in which 
he answers them. 

The majority of mankind look upon the 
world of society as a great reservoir from 
which, by some means honest or dishonest, they 
are to draw out whatever each one may con- 
sider necessary for his sustenance and enjoy- 
ment. They never ask who stores the reser- 
voir, or what will become of their fellow-men 
when it is drained of its contents. Still less do 
they think that they have any duty in the matter 
of filling it. They say, " The world owes us 
a living and we are going to have it," and they 
do not stop to inquire what is the ground of 
this indebtedness, or whether it has any limit 
other than the limit of their own capacity to 
consume and to enjoy. 

Such a claim needs but to be stated to be 
repudiated by every candid, intelligent mind. 
The fallacy is self-evident. It calls for no 
argument, but for indignant denial. The 
world owes no man a living; and whoever 
takes a living without earning it is a thief. 



The Ethics of Labor. 155 

Justice requires that each individual should re- 
ceive his fair share of the means of earning a 
living; but these being put within his reach he 
alone is responsible for their use or the neglect 
to use them, and he has a right only to such 
a living as he actually produces from them. 
The existing wealth of the world is simply that 
which men have produced by applying their 
energy to the God-given means of production. 
Each man, therefore, has a right to take from 
this accumulated store of wealth just as much 
as he puts into it, and no more; neither may he 
put in of one kind and take out of another ex- 
cept by permission. He may not put in gravel 
and demand gold in return unless his fellow- 
men really want gravel and are willing to pay 
for it with the precious metal. In point of 
fact, the world is always liberal in dealing with 
the individual, and men receive from society's 
treasure house in the aggregate much more 
than they put in. Where the working of nat- 
ural laws is unhindered, each one of us re- 
ceives a considerable gratuity from the earn- 
ings of those who have gone before. But this 
is a matter of grace, not of strict desert. 

The rights of labor may be easily and accu- 
rately stated. Having a just share of the means 
of production, every laborer may claim just 
what he produces therefrom, nothing more and 
nothing less. If he desires other products, he 
may either change the direction of his labor so. 



154 The Why of Poverty. 

as to secure them for himself, or he may ex- 
change his own products for the products of 
others, the amounts given and received being 
determined by the law of supply and demand. 
There is a notion quite prevalent among 
laboring people that the man who does the 
hardest work ought to receive the largest pay, 
and so should be the richest of men and live in 
the greatest luxury. Those who hold this 
theory usually estimate the severity of labor 
from a wholly physical standpoint. A simple 
illustration will suffice to demonstrate the fal- 
lacy of this idea. Let two men occupy adjoin- 
ing fields. One labors diligently, but moder- 
ately, cultivating his land, and raises a fine 
crop. The other rolls a huge rock about his 
field from morning till night and day after day, 
toiling much more severely than his neighbor, 
but producing no crop. Should the weary, 
struggling rock-roller have a better living than 
the easy-going farmer? Of course not. But 
why not ? Because his labor, hard though it 
may have been, has produced nothing. His 
time and energy have been wasted. He has ac- 
complished nothing by rolling the rock about 
his field. He has not added one penny-worth 
to the world's store of wealth, therefore he has 
no right to take anything from the common 
store for his livelihood. Indeed, had all men 
spent their time and strength in rolling rocks, 
though all might have labored diligently and 



The Ethics of Labor. 155 

become very much exhausted by their labor, 
there would have been no food for anybody and 
all must have starved. It is not, therefore, 
the severity of labor, but its productiveness, 
that determines its economic value and its 
moral worth. Not the hardest worker, but the 
greatest producer, is w T orthy of the largest pay. 

Production is accomplished in two ways. 
There is direct production and indirect produc- 
tion ; and it is important that we should recog- 
nize the latter as well as the former. If a man 
raises a thousand bushels of potatoes, and in the 
natural order of things one-half of them would 
be allowed to decay for want of a market, the 
man who increases the facilities of transporta- 
tion so as to save the five hundred bushels by 
bringing them at once to market, is as truly a 
producer as though he had himself raised five 
hundred bushels of potatoes. This is what is 
meant by indirect production. Its forms and 
methods are innumerable; but its result is al- 
ways the same, viz. : to increase the aggregate 
amount of wealth in the world. 

If a hundred men are engaged in a certain 
manufacture, and one of them, instead of work- 
ing as the others do, turns his mind to the 
study of mechanics and invents a machine that 
will save a great deal of hard labor and at the 
same time shall double the producing power of 
the other ninety-nine, that one has done more 
than any other to increase the amount of pro- 



156 The Why of Poverty. 

duction, hence he is deserving of higher wages 
than the others. He has become a producer 
indirectly by increasing the efficiency of the 
direct producers. 

Again, if a hundred men are cultivating the 
soil ignorantly and with rude implements, and 
one comes to them, and, without touching his 
hands to the work, instructs the ignorant and 
unskilled laborers so that their crops are much 
larger while their labor is appreciably lightened, 
the instructor becomes the greatest producer 
of all, though he does not directly produce any- 
thing. 

It is for this reason that the overseer in a 
factory or the manager of any kind of work 
receives higher wages than the ordinary work- 
man. His work may not be as hard as theirs 
from any point of view ; but without him their 
labor would be much less productive and con- 
sequently much less valuable. By arranging 
and controlling the work of all, he makes it 
possible for them to work together and to use 
their time and energy to the best possible ad- 
vantage. In this way their power of produc- 
tion is greatly augmented. The " captains of 
industry/' who direct the work of others, are 
our greatest producers, since it is their skill 
which adds most to the wealth of the com- 
munity. 

The importance of indirect production is too 
often underestimated, not to say wilfully be- 



The Ethics of Labor. 157 

littled, by popular socialistic agitators. Even 
among thoughtful and intelligent writers upon 
social economy there are not a few who look 
upon all indirect producers as drones eating 
up the honey which the workers have gathered. 
Take a single illustration from the pen of 
Adam Smith: 

" The labor of some of the most respectable 
orders in society is, like that of menial servants, 
unproductive of any value, and does not fix or 
realize itself in any permanent subject or vend- 
ible commodity, which endures after the 
labor is past, and for which an equal quantity 
of labor could afterwards be procured. The 
sovereign, for example, with all the officers 
both of justice and of war who serve under 
him, the whole army and navy, are unproduc- 
tive laborers. They are the servants of the 
public, and are maintained by a part of the 
annual produce of the industry of other people. 
Their service, how honorable, how useful, or 
how necessary soever, produces nothing for 
which an equal quantity of service can after- 
wards be procured. The protection, security, 
and defense of the commonwealth, the effect 
of their labor this year, will not purchase its 
protection, security and defense for the year to 
come. In the same class must be ranked some 
both of the gravest and most important, and 
some of the most frivolous professions : church- 
men, lawyers, physicians, men of letters of all 



158 The Why of Poverty. 

kinds, players, buffoons, musicians, opera sing- 
ers, opera dancers, etc. The labor of the mean- 
est of these has a certain value regulated by the 
very same principles which regulate that of 
every other sort of labor; and that of the no- 
blest and most useful produces nothing which 
could afterwards purchase or procure an equal 
quantity of labor." 

This passage well expresses the popular idea 
regarding productive labor ; yet it is very short- 
sighted and misleading. Every man ought to 
be a productive laborer in some way ; but to in- 
sist that every man become a direct producer 
is to roll back the wheels of civilization many 
centuries. It would benefit none, but would, 
on the contrary, result in great injury and loss 
to all classes of society, the aggregate amount 
of production would be lessened, and the na- 
tion's store of wealth would grow rapidly 
smaller. 

Consider the work of some of the profes- 
sions which the great economist styles unpro- 
ductive, and see if they do not play an impor- 
tant part in the production of wealth. Setting 
aside for the moment the highest ideal of 
wealth, let us test the productiveness of each 
profession by its efficiency in increasing the 
material riches of the world. 

Officers of state and magistrates are not di- 
rect producers it is true ; but they occupy essen- 
tially the same position in the community as 



The Ethics of Labor. 159 

overseers in a large factory. By watching 
over and directing and adjusting the relations 
of the different classes of society, they enable 
all to work together harmoniously and with- 
out waste of energy. When their work is well 
and faithfully performed, the private citizens 
of the community are able to produce much 
more than all could do without such orderly 
arrangement. 

Clergymen do not add directly to the wealth 
of the country by their professional labor. Yet 
they are indirect producers just in proportion 
as their preaching tends to elevate men and 
to make them more intelligently and con- 
scientiously industrious. The productive effi- 
ciency of the work of the Christian clergy is 
most readily seen by observing the effects of 
foreign missionary work. In cases where the 
Gospel has been preached in heathen lands the 
results may be calculated with comparative ac- 
curacy. Under the influence of Christian 
preaching, squalor gives place to comfort, idle- 
ness to thrift, and poverty to comparative 
plenty. More than all this, it is a well-attested 
fact that for every dollar that England and 
America have spent in foreign missionary ef- 
fort they have received, as a direct result, more 
than ten dollars in trade. Such results are 
more conspicuous in mission fields than in 
Christian lands ; but they are no more real nor 
important. The preaching of Gospel truth in 



160 The Why of Poverty. 

America and Europe closes many avenues of 
waste, and cultivates in an ever higher degree 
the productive energy and thrifty spirit of the 
people. It is bringing war to an end. It re- 
duces the expense of armies and police. In 
good time it will make an end of intemperance 
and kindred vices. Surely that is productive 
labor which in so many ways tends to increase 
the wealth of mankind. 

Journalists are not direct producers; but 
what would be the effect upon society and the 
world if their labor were discontinued? The 
most important manufacturing and commer- 
cial interests in the land would be crippled. 
For successful and profitable production two 
conditions are necessary, — capacity to produce, 
and a market for the commodity produced. 
Without the latter the former is of no avail. 
The farmer who raises ten thousand bushels of 
corn is no better off than his neighbor who 
raises only five hundred bushels unless he can 
sell his surplus to those who need it for con- 
sumption. Hence the newspaper, by publish- 
ing the needs of the various markets, and in 
countless lines of advertising and general in- 
formation, brings producers and markets 
readily into contact and thus becomes a potent 
factor in production. 

In a similar way the railway magnate be- 
comes a producer. With iron links he joins 
together the most distantly separated producers 



The Ethics of Labor. 161 

and consumers. With constantly increasing 
speed he brings the produce of the great west- 
ern farms to the doors of the workmen and 
manufacturers in the East. He takes even the 
most perishable fruits from the southern climes 
and places them all fresh and tempting on the 
tables of consumers at the North. For the 
trifling sum of a cent and a quarter he trans- 
ports a ton of freight a mile, so that the most 
distant markets are now reached with less ex- 
pense than was once incurred in reaching those 
but a few miles from home. For this reason 
production has been greatly stimulated and the 
latent resources of our country have been 
rapidly developed. But for the skill and energy 
of our great railroad men the present wealth 
and prosperity of the American nation would 
still be an incredible prophecy. 

Teachers are producers indirectly, because, 
in the exercise of their profession, they are in- 
structing those who shall afterwards engage 
in productive labor, and are fitting them to 
do more and better work than they could do if 
uneducated. 

Lawyers are also indirect producers, in so 
far as their profession is a necessary part of the 
machinery of society. Whatever of their labor 
is given to quibbling and to pettifogging is 
wasted. But the time and effort spent in posi- 
tive directions such as the perfecting of laws^ 
the maintenance of strict justice, and adjusting 
II 



1 62 The Why of Poverty. 

more equitably the relations of men, prevents 
friction and loss, and is, therefore, properly 
considered productive labor. 

So, too, the physician, by preserving the life 
and vigor of many productive workers, be- 
comes himself a producer. The scientist dis- 
covers the laws and principles upon which the 
success of labor depends and thus makes the 
efforts of the laborer more effective, and the 
inventor furnishes new and better instruments 
of labor, both increasing the capacity of the 
productive worker, so that with the same out- 
lay of energy he may produce much more, or 
producing the same may live more easily and 
toil less severely. Hence they too may claim 
a place in the ranks of productive laborers. 

The tradesman and banker, by facilitating 
the profitable or economical exchange of pro- 
ductions, become indirect producers. Even 
those professions which have no other end 
than to amuse the public, as the profession of 
actors and singers, may be considered produc- 
tive in so far as they afford needed recreation, 
giving rest to weary toilers, and prolonging 
or increasing their power to work. The ne- 
cessity in this direction is, however, so slight 
in comparison with the number of people thus 
employed, and the general effect of their labor 
is such that we must include the great ma- 
jority of public amusers among unproductive 
laborers. 



The Ethics of Labor. 163 

We cannot draw a definite line between the 
different trades and professions, and declare 
that the representatives of one profession are 
all productive laborers, while those of some 
other profession are all unproductive : for those 
professions which we consider most useless may 
become productive, under certain circumstances, 
and those which are generally accounted pro- 
ductive may likewise become unproductive. If 
ten men are working together as farmers, it 
may be to the advantage of all that one should 
refrain from tilling the soil and give his time 
to the manufacture and repairing of tools. If 
by so doing he really facilitates the work of all 
and secures a greater crop in return for their 
labor, his labor is as truly productive as is 
that of the other nine men. If, however, all 
should say: The tool maker is a producer, 
therefore we will make tools; then, however 
diligently they labored, they would starve; for 
none would be real producers, since they would 
be manufacturing articles not needed for use, 
and incapable in themselves of supplying any 
real want. 

This is actually the case whenever a trade or 
profession becomes overcrowded. There is no 
increase of valuable production proportionate to 
the increase of labor expended, consequently 
some must suffer want. Productiveness is not 
a mere matter of creative efficiency. Con- 
cerning everything created we must ask : Does 



164 The Why of Poverty. 

it really supply any human need? And it is 
not a question of possibility, but of fact. Grain 
is a commodity largely in demand for food; 
but the farmer who raises grain when there 
is already more grain in the market than the 
world's population can consume, is not really 
a productive laborer. He adds nothing to the 
wealth of the world; for, since the supply of 
grain is already sufficient, all that he raises or 
its equivalent must go to waste. Every intel- 
ligent man ought therefore to carefully distin- 
guish between severe toil and productive toil, 
and also between apparent productiveness and 
the true productiveness that meets and satis- 
fies some real need of humanity. 

The productiveness of labor determines its 
moral character as well as its economic value. 
Production is a duty. Unproductiveness is a 
sin. For him who possesses in any degree the 
capacity for production and does not utilize it, 
the fittest of all punishments is starvation. 
And this is the universal law whose operation 
is seen in any department of life where the 
Divine order is not set aside by human inter- 
ference. He only has a right to live who 
makes his own living. He who merely ex- 
tracts a living from the store which others have 
gathered is a public malefactor, even though 
he be content with the smallest pittance. 

The popular method of estimating the re- 
spectability of labor is very short-sighted and 



The Ethics of Labor. 165 

often false. Public opinion condemns the 
thief who takes his neighbor's property by 
stealth or by force or by certain proscribed 
methods of gambling. But if he adopts the 
disguise of honest toil and labors diligently and 
regularly, even though he produces nothing by 
his toil, he may take as much as he can from the 
wealth which others have produced and no one 
will call him to account for his action. Or he 
may steal without toiling, if he be shrewd 
enough to so entangle the lines of his stealing 
that his wealth when gained cannot be traced 
directly to individual losers; and his fellow- 
men, instead of censuring or punishing him, 
will only praise his skill as a financier. Con- 
sequently we find in every community a grow- 
ing class of unproductive workers. Often 
they are ambitious; but their ambition looks 
not to the real value of their labor. It only 
requires that their toil receive a rich remunera- 
tion. They spend all their energy and skill in 
filching the good things which have been 
gathered by the labor of their fellows. Like 
the drones in the bee-hive, they are apt to 
make a great buzzing and to rush about with 
an important air as though the life of the en- 
tire community depended upon them ; but with 
all their noise they gather no honey, and only 
drain the cells which others have filled. Little 
pity do they deserve when the sting of an in- 
dignant worker puts an end to their lazy exist- 



1 66 The Why of Poverty. 

ence. It were well if the sting of public con- 
demnation could forever make an end of the 
respectability of unproductive labor. That 
labor only is truly respectable — i. e., worthy 
of respect — which is productive of good, which 
makes the world richer, better, happier. They 
only are worthy of being counted in the ranks 
of labor whose toil is in some way productive, 
whose lives are spent in supplying the great 
need of humanity. The mere money-maker 
or accumulator, — however valuable be the 
wealth accumulated, — though he labor many 
long hours, and though his hands be hardened 
with toil, and his brain racked with care, has 
no claim to honor or even to recognition among 
the workers of society. 



The Ethics of Speculation. 167 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE ETHICS OF SPECULATION. 

The moral character of speculation is sel- 
dom called in question. Although a certain 
stigma is often attached to the term " specula- 
tor/' and the general public looks askance at 
the wholesale transactions in the Exchanges 
and on Wall Street, it is not from any moral 
disapproval of the practice in itself considered, 
but rather from personal aversion to individ- 
uals who have acquired wealth by this means, 
and the particular methods which they have 
employed. Ordinary speculation is sanctioned 
by law and by the popular conscience. It is 
accounted as honorable as productive trade, 
and few persons would be restrained by con- 
scientious scruples from sharing in its profits. 
As a consequence speculation has come to be 
recognized as a respectable profession when not 
accompanied by overt dishonesty. In every 
community we may find men who gain a live- 
lihood by speculation alone. Besides these are 
very many representatives from every class of 
society and every real or imaginable profession 



1 68 The Why of Poverty. 

who invest a part of their surplus earnings in 
this form of trade. While they continue to 
devote their chief attention and energy to some 
productive calling, whether it be the law, or 
husbandry, or preaching the Gospel, or meas- 
uring cloth, as often as they can spare a few 
dollars, they put it into margins or stocks, or 
buy a few lots of land in some growing town ; 
or enter the Board of Trade. 

A very few out of the vast number who thus 
invest are successful ; and these usually give up 
their legitimate toil and turn their whole at- 
tention to speculation. Others, and many 
more in number, simply lose what they invest 
in this way. Still others, being threatened with 
loss, constantly add to their unprofitable invest- 
ment with the hope of saving what they have 
already invested and thus involve their whole 
business in ruin, or making use of funds not 
their own become entangled in hopeless defal- 
cation. It is a fact worthy of notice that the 
majority of our defaulters have been drawn 
into dishonesty by unsuccessful speculation. 
With results, however, we have nothing to do 
in the present discussion. We are only con- 
cerned with the fact that the practice of specu- 
lation in some form is well-nigh universal. 
Men who pride themselves on their strict hon- 
esty, who would not intentionally wrong their 
fellow-men, and who would be ashamed to buy 
a lottery ticket or stake their money at the 



The Ethics of Speculation. 169 

gaming table, have no conscientious scruples 
against speculation. 

Few persons distinguish between legal and 
moral right; and in this land there is a tend- 
ency to submit all questions to the dictum of 
the majority. We must remember, however, 
that questions of right and wrong cannot be 
decided by a show of hands or weight of au- 
thority. These standards are very uncertain 
and changeful. Popular opinion in ancient 
Sparta declared theft to be a virtue, and the 
same authority in Judea branded Divine good- 
ness a crime. But notwithstanding all the 
changes of public sentiment, the eternal prin- 
ciples of right and truth have remained the 
same, and the moral character of every practice 
or institution must be determined by these 
alone. 

When weighed in the balances of eternal 
justice, speculation is found wanting. Its 
character will not stand the supreme test. 
It is a moral wrong. It is in its essential 
nature opposed to all accepted ethical stand- 
ards. It stultifies the fundamental principles 
of right which must underlie all permanent 
social relations. The speculator is a thief 
from society. He is a parasite, living only 
as he sucks the life blood of another. He 
is a public malefactor, having no claim to a 
place in the ranks of honest trade. 

The business of the speculator has not grown 



170 The Why of Poverty. 

up out of any real or fancied need of society. 
It is the result of unmitigated selfishness, the 
reckless haste to be rich. The possibility of 
acquiring wealth has begotten an intense desire 
for wealth. The " mushroom " fortunes so 
common in a new country have become a snare 
to the people, and almost every young person 
cherishes the feverish hope that through some 
happy circumstance wealth will come to him 
much more quickly than it can be earned by 
ordinary and natural methods. In a land like 
ours there is much to foster this hope. Our 
resources are enormous in comparison with our 
population and they are as yet very imperfectly 
developed. In them lie untold possibilities of 
wealth. The discovery of a mine has made 
many a poor man rich in a day. Petroleum 
wells have accomplished the same result. Use- 
ful inventions have poured money into the 
pockets of men who were wise enough and for- 
tunate enough to take advantage of the patent 
laws. The unusual demands created by the 
late war were a means of bringing wealth to 
not a few. And so it has often happened that 
men of no extraordinary ability have, by seiz- 
ing some great opportunity, leaped at one 
bound from poverty to luxury in a most un- 
expected manner and without unusual exer- 
tion on their own part. 

Whenever a fortune is thus suddenly ac- 
quired the spirit of emulation is aroused. Hun- 



The Ethics of Speculation. 171 

dreds of onlookers become dissatisfied with the 
ordinary, slow processes of acquisition. The 
industry, the unremitting toil, the constant 
care, and the patient waiting necessary to gain 
even a moderate competence are scorned in 
view of the chance to make a fortune in a day. 
The question arises in every mind — " One 
man has done it, why may not all do the same ?" 
With the question comes the determination. 
In their eagerness they entirely forget the im- 
portant relation of quid pro quo, and see only 
the fortune acquired without labor or waiting. 
If natural opportunities for acquisition are 
wanting, they create artificial opportunities. 
If they cannot make themselves rich by en- 
riching others, they will do it by impoverish- 
ing others. In other words — they speculate^ 
Wealth is legitimately gained only by means 
of production in some form. The discoverer 
of a mine or of an oil well brings within the 
reach of men vast stores of wealth which w T ere 
before unknown and therefore useless; hence 
he is in reality a great producer and the for- 
tune which he acquires is only a fair return to 
him for the increase of wealth which he has 
given to the world. The inventor has become 
an indirect producer by increasing the produc- 
ing power of others, if his invention has any 
real value; hence he also receives only a just 
return for what he has given to men. The 
inventor of the mowing machine immeasurably 



172 The Why of Poverty. 

increased the productive power of agricultural 
laborers, and thus fairly earned all the wealth 
he may have derived from his invention. The 
same element of productiveness underlies all 
legitimate trade. A farmer in the West raises 
ten thousand bushels of corn. If he finds no 
market for it, the greater portion must go to 
waste. But if another man buys nine thou- 
sand bushels and carries it to eastern consum- 
ers, he has become a producer as really as 
though he had himself raised nine thousand 
bushels of corn. The railroad men and all 
who took a necessary part in conveying the 
corn from its original producer to the con- 
sumer are indirectly producers, for although 
of themselves they have produced nothing, 
they have saved the production of the farmer 
from perishing and thus being lost to the 
world. The man who actually buys railroad 
stocks as a permanent investment becomes a 
partial owner of the road and the profit which 
he derives from its regular dividends is legiti- 
mate gain, since he mjakes an equivalent re- 
turn to society in the productive work of the 
road. In this way the labor of merchants, 
bankers and countless other classes of society 
is accounted productive because it forms a nec- 
essary link between producer and consumer and 
thus adds to the wealth of the world. The re- 
sult of all truly productive labor is to increase 
the aggregate wealth of society, and any labor 



The Ethics of Speculation. 173 

that does not increase or save from loss either 
the actual wealth or the wealth-producing 
power of mankind is not in any sense produc- 
tive. Speculation does neither, but only con- 
sumes the wealth of society without replacing 
a dollar. 

Again, all legitimate trade is based upon a 
voluntary exchange of equal values. This im- 
plies first of all that both of the immediate 
parties to the exchange shall derive an equal 
advantage from it. This is not all, however, 
for many exchanges affect not the immediate 
parties alone, but the community as a whole; 
and it is just as essential that we leave the 
treasury of society undisturbed as it is that we 
deal honestly with a single individual. 

A ntan may derive large profits from purely 
speculative trade while the individual with 
whom he trades apparently loses nothing. In 
fact there may be an extended circle of specu- 
lative trade in which all parties directly con- 
cerned seem to be about equally profited. This 
is often the case in land speculation. One in- 
dividual may buy a lot of land at a moderate 
price and sell it almost immediately at a great 
advance. The buyer may sell again also at an 
advance; and so the selling may continue till 
one buys it at a high price for permanent pos- 
session, and even the last buyer may feel per- 
fectly satisfied with his bargain, for he may 
still use the land profitably. There has been 



174 The Why of Poverty. 

no loss but rather a direct gain to each individ- 
ual having a part in the complex transaction, 
but in every such case society at large is the 
loser. 

Speculation knows no law of fair or equal 
exchange. It is not exchange at all. It is 
merely disguised and legalized robbery. Its 
working is wholly in one direction. On one 
side it is all gain; on the other side it is all 
loss. Every dollar that the speculator gains 
represents a dollar or more of loss to some one, 
it may be to the other parties directly con- 
cerned in the transaction, it may be to others 
indirectly concerned, it may be the entire com- 
munity. 

The paper contracts of the Exchanges are 
perhaps the most extensive of all speculative 
transactions. These contracts represent no 
exchange whatever. They are wholly inde- 
pendent of the element of production. Their 
fulfilment implies merely the payment of a cer- 
tain sum of money from one speculator to an- 
other for which nothing is given in return. 
The money may go in either direction with 
equal propriety, since it is wholly unearned. 
The direction in which it goes is arbitrarily de- 
termined by the fluctuations of the market. 

The same is true of stock speculation. So 
far as the principle is concerned it makes no 
difference whether speculation is in whole stocks 
or in margins. The broker who buys a thou- 



The Ethics of Speculation. 175 

sand shares of stock in some good railway at 
par and sells them a week later at five per cent, 
advance because of a forced rise in the market 
has no moral right to the profit received. The 
real value of the stock as represented by the 
condition and traffic of the railroad remains 
unchanged. He has not earned the money thus 
gained. If he has derived a profit of five 
thousand dollars some one has lost just five 
thousand dollars plus the waste which inevi- 
tably accompanies all such transactions. Again, 
if I place five hundred dollars in the hands of 
a broker to be invested in margins, when 
the transaction is closed if I find that I have 
gained a hundred dollars, then I know that 
some one has lost a hundred dollars in addition 
to various brokers' fees and other expenses. 
When the Bulls and Bears have a skirmish on 
Wall Street and the victors win a million doU 
lars, it does not always follow that their im- 
mediate opponents lose a million dollars, but 
it does follow that somebody has lost it. Usu- 
ally the loss may be reckoned in small sums in- 
vested in margins by traders, clerks, mechanics, 
and others throughout the country. 

In its essential nature and mode of opera- 
tion speculation in all these forms is identical 
with the lottery and ordinary gambling, only 
that it is if possible less honest. When money 
is taken from one individual and given to an- 
other, not because he has earned it, but because 



176 The Why of Poverty. 

chance has decreed it, what difference "does it 
make whether the chance is determined by a 
throw of the dice or the choice of a lucky num- 
ber, or a movement of the stock market? Is 
not the moral character of the transaction the 
same in either case? In the case of the great 
speculators they are themselves the forces that 
move the market and determine the loss or 
gain. Their whole effort and ingenuity is 
given to the work of circulating false impres- 
sions and misleading their opponents as to their 
real intentions and the actual state of the 
market. Their action is precisely that of ex- 
perienced and unscrupulous gamblers trying to 
outwit each other in the keenness of their cheat- 
ing. 

What a moral spectacle was presented to the 
world when, a few years ago, a father and son, 
both prominent speculators, measured swords 
in the arena of the stock market. Never were 
deadly enemies more anxious to deceive one 
another regarding their movements and inten- 
tions. Each taxed his strategic powers to the 
utmost, and the youth proved a more apt pupil 
in the art of dissembling than even his doting 
parent could wish, for he at length succeeded 
in bleeding the old gentleman to the extent of 
many thousand dollars. 

Again, take the case of the land speculator. 
His business is of the same moral character as 
that of his brother in the stock market. It 



The Ethics of Speculation. 177 

depends for success upon an artificial disturb- 
ance of the natural laws of trade. He aims 
not to supply an existing demand, but to create 
a fictitious demand which he may use for his 
own profit. He goes to some quiet town, buys 
up a large tract of land in some eligible locality, 
and then, by a process well known to specula- 
tors, creates a " boom " and attracts buyers. 
In a very short time he sells enough of the laud 
to give him a rich profit on his investment. Or 
it may be that he prefers to go to a place where 
the boom has already been started, and he 
merely steps into the current and, by skilful 
purchases and sales, causes to pass rapidly 
through his hands a number of desirable lots 
by which process he gains many thousands of 
dollars. 

Now what right has he to the money thus 
accumulated? He has not earned it. He has 
added nothing to the wealth of the community. 
The land is just as it was when he bought it. 
He may have laid out streets and made some 
slight improvements, but they are trifling in 
comparison with the profit derived. He has 
taken several thousand dollars from the com- 
munity for which he has made no return. This 
is obviously unjust, no matter by what process 
it has been accomplished. He may say that he 
has cheated no one, for the purchasers have 
all done as well as himself. They bought the 
land freely and without any manner of com- 
12 



i;8 The Why of Poverty. 

pulsion; therefore the trade is in every way a 
case of fair exchange. So it seems if we con- 
sider only the immediate parties to the trans- 
action. But let us look a little further. I buy 
a lot of land to-day for a thousand dollars. 
By dividing it into small lots and booming it 
I sell it next week for two thousand dollars. 
What have I done ? I have taken advantage of 
an artificially created demand for land to ex- 
tort from society a thousand dollars for — 
nothing. The individuals to whom I sold the 
lots may fancy that they made good bargains, 
and so they may as compared with others; but 
the community is just one thousand dollars 
poorer for my transaction. I have drawn a 
thousand dollars from the world's store of 
wealth without returning a cent. 

Many an American town is suffering to-day 
from the fearful drain that has been made upon 
its resources under pretense of stimulating its 
early growth. Speculation of this sort affects 
the prosperity of a town much as alcohol af- 
fects a sick man, giving an unnatural vitality 
at the time which must be paid for with interest 
in the future. Many people fancy that our 
country is being vastly benefited by the work 
of speculators in developing our great West 
and in building up new towns on the frontier. 
But if a balance sheet could be accurately 
drawn, it would appear that every dollar of 
gain from these speculations in real estate has 



The Ethics of Speculation. 179 

its corresponding dollar of loss in some part 
of the country. The successful towns have 
been built upon the ruins of others less success- 
ful. The advancing prices of land in Kansas 
or California only keep pace with the falling 
prices in the hill towns of New England. The 
gains of the non-producing western specula- 
tor are accounted for in the scanty living of the 
producing farmers and other laborers in the 
East. 

From an economic point of view speculation 
in land or in any other commodity where there 
is actual ownership and transfer of property, 
is much less harmful than the paper contracts 
and speculation in margins, since it is necessar- 
ily limited in amount. Ethically, however, 
there is no difference. Every form of trade 
whose profits do not represent real earnings 
but are derived from artificial changes in the 
market, is morally wrong even though its 
economic effect be unappreciable. Any person 
who draws a dollar from the treasury of so- 
ciety without making an equivalent return is 
dishonest. 

Every social problem presents two phases, the 
economic and the ethical. These are in a 
sense wholly independent of each other, yet they 
are always harmonious. That is to say, the 
economic effect of a custom or institution can- 
not be attributed directly to its ethical charac- 
ter, nor, on the other hand, is its ethical status 



i8o The Why of Poverty. 

to be determined by its economic effect alone. 
Still it is doubtless true in every instance that, 
in the broadest view, the economically expe- 
dient is also the ethically right. Of the two 
elements the ethical is the more important, 
since it lies at the foundation of all social rela- 
tions. No custom can be beneficial to society, 
no economic system can be satisfactory, no 
state of society can be permanently harmonious, 
that does not rest on a sound ethical basis. 
Furthermore, any plan for the solution of ex- 
isting difficulties that takes no account of the 
ethical principles involved must prove a signal 
failure. It is of little use to change external 
forms unless our work goes deeper. To legis- 
late evils out of existence is impossible. Eco- 
nomic changes and reformatory legislation are 
of value only when they express a real advance 
in the moral sentiment of the people. 

The evils which exist in American society to- 
day and which cause so much trouble and un- 
rest are not the result of an imperfect social 
system merely. They spring chiefly from a 
lack of true moral principle. The popular con- 
science is not as keen as it should be, especially 
in matters where large sums of money are in- 
volved. It is difficult to persuade a man that 
the business by means of which he has ac- 
cumulated great wealth is morally wrong. The 
selfish love of money lies athwart the path of 
every moral reform and clogs the wheels of 



The Ethics of Speculation. 181 

human progress. For many years slavery was 
declared to be a Christian institution, because 
there was money in it. Hundreds of men will 
not see the real iniquity of the liquor traffic 
because they derive a large revenue from it. 
So it is with speculation. The large fortunes 
that have been quickly and easily acquired by 
this form of trade have made men willingly 
blind to its real character. It has appeared so 
respectable in many cases as to deceive even 
the very elect. 

But the time is coming when this disguise 
must be removed. The spirit of the age de- 
mands it. A moral evil requires a moral 
remedy. Social changes may accomplish some- 
thing in this matter; but there must also be a 
thorough change of moral sentiment. The 
conscience of the people must be more finely 
tempered. The work of reform w^ill not be 
complete till the speculator is degraded from 
the ranks of honest trade and compelled to take 
his place beside gamblers and other social out- 
laws. 

THE END. 



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